Glass
by EllaPenny
Summary: Hermione Granger. Worthless. Bookworm. Know-it-all. Mudblood. Stuck up. Suicidal. Saved. What if? Set during 6th year. COMPLETE
1. Saved

The cold glass pressed against her cheek, Hermione awoke once again discovering herself to be sat on the windowsill in an empty classroom, her face resting on the window. The grey-brown bricks supporting her back were not very comfortable, and had given her backache sometime after she had fallen asleep, into the early hours of the morning. Shifting slightly, a sharp jolt of pain ran through the base of her spine, and she froze to let it pass before trying to move again. Her bare feet touched the stone ground, and she felt goose bumps raise on her legs. She was freezing; the thin white nightdress she was clothed in was not enough to prevent the coldness seeping through during the night.

She checked her watch, the one she always kept on in case of emergency. _Fifteen minutes to make it back to the dorm before the other girls wake up_. She stepped stealthily along the twisting hallways on her way back to the dormitories, careful not to make a sound. She was practiced at this; she was completely silent.

Reaching the warmth of the common room, she found Ginny asleep on the sofa, in front of the embers of the dying fire, surrounded by Quidditch books. Hermione knew she was intent on making the Gryffindor team this year, just like nearly all of her brothers. Ginny Weasley, the fiery redhead with a temper to match. Her brow was furrowed, indicating that the dream she was having was not a pleasant one. Hermione was unsurprised by this; it was a well-known fact that Ginny was in love with Harry, who was going through a rough time at that moment. Then again, when wasn't he? Before she would let her mind wander to the possibility of Harry's death, she quickly shifted her eyes to her destination, the bedroom.

She then arrived at the dorms to find all of the other students still sleeping soundly. Parvati Patil, beautiful as she was, laid in all her gorgeousness with the perfection of a sleeping princess. Lavender Brown, often referred to by Hermione herself as a 'blonde bimbo', was not so pretty in her sleep as Parvati, but from the slight pout of her lips still present even in sleep, it was clear to Hermione that she was confident, proud and arrogant. Before she began contemplating her own features and what they said about her, she shook her head and turned towards the bathroom.

Once inside she turned on the shower and twisted the temperature control down; all the other girls liked their showers far hotter than hers. As it heated, Hermione looked in the mirror at her pallid, pale face, disappointed at what she saw. Her once moderately attractive face had become whiter and more sallow from all the bad nights, her once vibrant and bushy brown hair seemed to have deflated, hanging loosely now around her upper torso. Her eyes no longer their old, animated brown selves. There was no spark of life anymore.

She stripped off her nightdress, and looked again at her reflection. She could see the faint outlines of every rib. She wasn't dangerously underweight yet, but she was definitely close. She'd already learned the art of layering clothing to bulk out. Sighing, she looked up at her own face again. It must have been one of the worse nights last night, as the tearstains left on her cheeks were wider than usual. She couldn't look anymore, so she turned away and got into the shower.

Sometime while she was washing herself, the castle seemed to come alive, hundreds of hungry students flooding the corridors on the way to the Great Hall. Hermione braced herself for yet another day of the same endlessly painful routine: eat a small breakfast, answer any and all questions asked, skip lunch, answer questions, eat a small dinner, read a book, go to bed, cry in an empty classroom with no knowledge of how she got there.

Hermione ate a tiny amount of breakfast with her usual group of friends, Harry, Ron and Ginny, and as usual, they didn't speak to her. She felt as if she were turning into the air, completely invisible to the human eye, or at least to the eyes of any other student; she was the pride and joy of most professors. She continued through the day, completely as normal, sticking to her routine, with the added surprise of being called a Mudblood four times by various Slytherin slugs throughout the day, and then, once again, she found herself at gone midnight staring out of an empty classroom window at the sky and the lake, a stream of tears reflecting in the silver glow of moonlight.

Most people who saw Hermione Granger cry would expect it to be because of a fight with Ron or Harry, or because of the stresses living as the best friend of the Boy-Who-Lived would bring, or because standing in Harry's shadow gave her no identity, or even out of jealousy towards Lavender Brown for her established, admittedly mostly physical relationship with Ron. None of these were correct, by a long shot.

She cried not because of Lavender Brown herself, but because of the broken bond between her and Ron it had caused. Of course, she was upset when Ron had chosen the shallow, self-important girl above herself, and she was hurt. But she was not jealous of the bimbo, and never would be.

She cried not because of a lack of identity, but because being the nerd of the Golden Trio had made people learn to expect things from her; that she be a bookworm, that she be a know-it-all, that she be a muggleborn witch and proud, that she be the epitome of strength and bravery all the time, because she was a Gryffindor. She could not always live up to these expectations.

She cried not because the Trio fought, but because they didn't. They never did anything with her any more, rarely noticed her, just expected her to tag along and be willing to be used as a personal research manual whenever they needed her.

Harry was far too busy chasing down Malfoy to notice her quietly wasting away behind her screen of silent normalcy. Ron's eyes were most frequently too close to Lavender's face to even see her. Ginny's attention was always either on her Quidditch ambition or on Harry and his issues, and Hermione couldn't blame her. She couldn't blame anyone, really. It was her own fault, she'd allowed the entire school to take advantage of her. These were the only people who wouldn't openly laugh in her face, but she often questioned whether they did behind her back, or if they really never noticed her at all. She didn't know which option was worse.

Following the three friends loosely after dinner, she said her almost inaudible 'goodnights' and crept up to her room. She opened her book and read Great Potioneers and their Concoctions by wand light until all the other girls' bed curtains were closed and she could hear faint snores. By this time, the words on the page were beginning to blur together. She recognised this feeling. She'd been here many times before.

Words began spinning through her head, growing louder and more forceful. She only managed to grab hold of a few, and they cut deep into her heart until it began to pound inside her chest. Her breath got stuck in her throat until she choked, tears streaming past her lashes. Her stomach tightened into one great knot. She couldn't breathe, she needed air.

Hermione Granger; Mudblood. Hermione Granger; know-it-all. Hermione Granger; bookworm.

 _Hermione Granger; person_ , she wanted to add, but she knew she couldn't. She wasn't a person, not anymore, and no one noticed. No one cares.

 _No one cares._

Throwing back the curtains around her bed, she walked briskly towards the door, still aware of being quiet. The last thing she needed was for any of her roommates to see her this way. Deciding that walking wasn't fast enough, she broke into a run, still gasping for oxygen. She didn't realise until she was climbing the step to the astronomy tower that this was her destination. Normally she ended up on a windowsill, but this time she needed more air. Reaching the top, she sat down on the ground with her head between her knees, willing herself to breathe.

 _No one cares._

 _ **No one cares.**_

The words echoed. It was at this moment that Hermione realised she was no longer sitting harmlessly next to the window, crying her problems away. She was standing now, on the sill of the tall open window, her bare feet cold against the stone and her hair and nightdress being blown back by the cool night breeze from the window, now fully open. She looked up into the night sky, at the half hidden moon. One step.

 _No one cares._

She stepped.

She fell for exactly half of a second, and then an arm had her around her waist, pulling her back inside, back into the spiral of unhappiness.

She was vaguely aware that the arm wrapped around her waist was attached to a male body, and the chest her ear was now pressed against was rumbling because he was shouting to someone. Hermione's eyes were closed, but she could hear the thunderous sound of a few pairs of heavy feet, and more senseless babbling that she decided must have been people talking, but she could not understand what they were saying and she was too limp and weak to open her eyes. She would rather just fade into the blackness than face the consequences of being caught attempting suicide. That jolted her back to reality like a slap in the face.

She had tried to commit suicide. She, Hermione Granger, Mudblood Gryffindor extraordinaire, had tried to off herself!

The man was kneeling on the floor, supporting her head and body against his own. The arm around her shifted, and then moved off completely. She felt herself being levitated off of the man and into the air, still curled up almost into a ball. The next thing she knew, she was laying in an infirmary bed, several concerned faces surrounding her.

It was then that she decided everyone would want answers, and so it was then that she let the tired blackness consume her.


	2. Changed

Hermione's next few days passed by in a blur of hospital food and sedative-induced sleep, without much else. It seemed that all of the sleep that she hadn't had for the last few months was being forced to catch up with her in a matter of days, however, the faculty were under the impression she'd hit her head on the ground as she'd been pulled back inside the tower. She noticed when she'd gone to the bathroom and looked in the mirror that the huge purple bags under her eyes had been reduced slightly. The food that was being choked down her neck at every opportunity had helped a little also; her face looked marginally less sunken and pale. She still looked as though she'd been in a coma, though. The cold weather probably hadn't helped, with it being mid-November. Settling back into bed each time, she wondered if she were going to receive visitors today, as she hadn't so far. If she'd had visitors besides Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall she had been asleep at the time. Either that or no one cared enough to notice she was gone. She couldn't decide option which was more probable, and it didn't help her uncertainty.

It was at least three days of nothing but sleeping and eating miniscule amounts of the enormous plates of food, brought up kindly from dinner by the house elves, before Madam Pomfrey told her that Professor Mcgonagall was wishing to speak with her. The Professor strode decisively into the hospital wing and took a seat next to Hermione's bed.

"Miss Granger." Minerva eyed Hermione warily.

"Professor." Hermione sighed and looked down. For the first time, she was awake enough to feel guilt. "I'm sorry. Really."

"Hermione, I'm not angry. But I would like for you to explain to me what you were doing on top of that tower at Merlin-knows-what hour. And more specifically I would like for you to explain to me why on earth you thought that standing atop a slippery window ledge hundreds of feet above the grounds was a good idea."

Hermione didn't understand. Didn't the professor know that she had been stood there on purpose? Of course, the only other person who saw that she stepped out of the window deliberately was the person who had been hiding up there with her. He'd caught her too quickly for him to have only just arrived when she jumped, and she hadn't heard any footsteps on the stairs. She supposed he didn't want to reveal his own reasons for sneaking around at the top of the astronomy tower so late at night. However, she didn't know what he'd told the professor, so the only other option was to give an excuse and hope it was the same one as the mysterious suicide-preventer had given. Mcgonagall's face said more than clearly that she was also waiting to hear a matching story from her.

"I slipped. I sleepwalk, you see."

"You… sleepwalk." Mcgonagall didn't seem impressed. Hermione panicked a little. What could the stranger possibly have said? It would be so much easier to guess if she'd had any idea who it was. But she'd given her excuse, and there was no going back now.

"Yes. It drives my parents crazy when I go back home," Hermione smiled a little, "because I'd constantly be wandering around the house at all hours of the morning. I must have had a really vivid dream. That's all, professor."

"You realise your sleepwalking nearly had you walking out of the open window of the astronomy tower?" Mcgonagall pierced her with beady eyes. Hermione looked down and fell silent. "To be perfectly honest I thought the student who caught you was lying about his reasons for being up there. However, as it seems you really were asleep and wandering through the corridors… Well, I'm just glad you're OK. We may need to start placing a lock on your dormitory door, nonetheless. We can't have students sleepwalking all over the castle and getting themselves hurt."

"I understand." Hermione replied quickly, thankful that she'd been let off the hook so relatively easily. Although she sincerely felt guilty for lying to her respected professor, how could she possibly explain her real reason for being up there? She'd be hauled off to the mental ward at St Mungo's before she could blink.

"You should know that out of respect for you, we haven't allowed anyone to see you. This, of course, has meant that Mr Potter, Mr Weasley, and Miss Weasley are chomping at the bit to check on you, and they've been sat outside the wing all day today."

Again, Hermione became confused. If they'd come to see her, that meant that firstly, they'd noticed she was gone, and secondly, they cared whether or not she was hurt. Genuinely surprised by this, she cynically questioned how long their concern for her would last once she was out of the hospital wing and back to being their personal portable library.

"Thank you, Professor. Just out of curiosity-"

"When can you leave?" Professor Mcgonagall chuckled. Hermione smiled ruefully.

"It's nothing to do with the care I'm receiving, I just hate sitting around feeling useless." Of course, she felt useless anyway, but the professor didn't need to know that.

"Well, I've advised Madam Pomfrey to give you one last check over before you can go back to your dormitory, and if all is well, I expect you in classes tomorrow morning."

"Thank you."

Professor Mcgonagall nodded once and then stood to leave, having an inaudible and brief conversation with Madam Pomfrey before marching out of the door, on to more professor duties.

A few seconds after the door had swung shut, Hermione assumed the professor had told her friends she was allowed to have visitors because the door crashed open again, much to the chagrin of Madam Pomfrey. The only other student currently in the hospital wing was a second year Ravenclaw boy who'd managed to transfigure his hand into a large matchstick, though, and he was still sound asleep. The three companions rushed towards Hermione in a blur of black robes and red hair until Ginny smothered her with a warm, tight hug that she was very unused to.

"The last time we saw you here for more than an hour you had a mirror stuck in your hand." Hermione couldn't help it; she cracked a smile towards Ron's memory.

"Hermione, what happened?" Harry and Ron stood beside her bed, smiling at her, clearly relieved to see her so well.

"Nothing really." They each looked at her bemusedly. "I walked to the astronomy tower in my sleep, and someone stopped me from falling out the window." She decided the lie would have to be enough explanation to her friends as well as her professor.

"That's all? You've been in the hospital wing for half the week! No visitors allowed!" Ron exclaimed.

"They think I banged my head when I was pulled back. Madam Pomfrey told me no visitors allowed until they made sure my head was okay."

"We've been so worried! Harry wanted to get the invisibility cloak and come in to see you, but I reminded him the doors are locked at night for that exact reason." Ginny looked at Harry.

"I could have apparated." Harry mumbled.

"No you couldn't, you can't apparate on Hogwarts grounds, I've _told_ you." Ginny retorted. Despite the playfully argumentative exchange, Hermione could feel their concern for her, and she was deeply touched. She'd never realised they'd even notice she was gone, let alone wait outside the doors for hours to see her. Her eyes teared up at the thought.

"Are you okay? Are you in pain?" Ron immediately rushed to move Hermione's pillows.

"No, I'm fine, Ron. I told you, I'm OK, they're letting me go this afternoon."

"I don't understand." Harry said, a furrow between his eyebrows. He focused his bright green eyes on her face. "You've never sleepwalked before."

Hermione faltered.

"Actually, I've seen her going out of the common room a few times at gone midnight over the last few months when I've been studying. She really does sleepwalk." Another thing Hermione hadn't known; her night-time walks had not, in fact, gone unnoticed by everyone. Although, she was grateful to have somebody to back up her lie, whether Ginny knew it was a lie or not.

"Oh… Why didn't you ever stop her?"

"She was usually gone too fast for me to follow!" Ginny defended, folding her arms. She turned back to Hermione. "Oh, I'm so glad you're OK." She hugged her friend again.

"There is one more thing though. Who stopped you from falling out of the window?" Ron asked.

That was a point. She'd forgotten to ask the professor who her so-called saviour had been.

"Actually, I don't know. I was out cold by the time he had and I forgot to ask Professor Mcgonagall when she came in. I don't even know who brought me here."

"How do you know it was a _he_?" Ron's eyebrows pulled together.

"He shouted for help after I hit my head. I don't know what he said, I was pretty out of it, but I know it was low, it wasn't a girls' voice. I-I slipped and he had stopped me falling out of the window. I don't know who he was, but he saved my life." Again, Hermione didn't see a need to tell them she had intended to end it in the first place.

"Weird." Ron shook his head, his eyebrows remaining knotted.

"Weird." Harry repeated, almost too quietly to hear, and a strange look had come across his face.

"What?" Hermione asked. She'd known him for five years, and she deduced from his facial expression that he knew something she didn't. It was an uncomfortable change of pace for her, like the first lesson with Professor Slughorn when he had beaten her with the help of that battered textbook.

"Well, you said-"

"Alright, everyone, out. You've had fifteen minutes and I need to check the patient over. Out, out, out!" Madam Pomfrey bustled over, leaving only enough time for Harry and Ron to give Hermione a quick hug before being given the metaphorical boot.

"We'll tell you later!" Harry called over Madam Pomfrey's shoulder.

"See you at dinner!" Ron shouted backwards as the door swung shut behind them. Hermione was sure she'd seen a blonde pigtail and an arm snake around Ron the second he'd exited the room.

Dinner that night was a much less uncomfortable experience than had been the last few months. Hermione was joining in on conversation once again, eating more than just a few mouthfuls of dinner and laughing at jokes Ron told instead of simply poking her food with a fork and then dashing off to the library. She knew all this warmth might not last, and she may just go slowly back to being their walking encyclopaedia again, however she decided to enjoy it whilst it existed.

"So what were you going to say earlier, Harry? In the hospital wing?" Hermione asked, chewing a mouthful of roasted potatoes, and unable to not know something Harry did know any longer.

"Oh! I forgot. Well… I think I have a theory on who stopped you falling the other night."

"Really? How?" Hermione was surprised by this; she had no idea and he had even less information to go on than her in the first place.

Harry leaned in towards her and spoke in a lower voice. "Can we talk about this later? Instead of in a hall full of potential eavesdroppers?" He looked pointedly towards Ron's right-hand side, on which Lavender Brown had taken a few seconds' break from being attached at the lips to him to listen to Harry and Hermione's conversation.

"Yeah, okay." Hermione dropped it. She was still irritated by Lavender's presence wherever Ron went and wasn't particularly keen on sharing such personal details as who'd saved her life in front of the loud-mouthed blonde.

Ginny, sitting opposite Hermione and next to Ron, jabbed her brother in the ribs with her elbow just as he and Lavender locked lips for the fourth time that meal.

"Do you think you could cut it out? I'm eating here!"

Ron mumbled something unintelligible and returned to his meal, which he had made great dents in despite his mouth being frequently preoccupied with Lavender's. Hermione, on the other hand, had made a conscious choice to take no notice of what they were doing, determined that if she was in her first good mood in the three months, she wouldn't let them ruin it. She focused instead on talking with Ginny and Harry and keeping her eyes on her food.

Her distracting herself from Ron and Lavender had made her notice something else she hadn't before. How Ginny seemed slightly too flippant in the way she brought up names of other boys their age, and the way Harry glanced just a little too long when Ginny pushed her hair back. She'd known the whole time she'd been friends with Ginny that she was completely in love with Harry, but now she was mentioning the names of other boys, was Harry finally beginning to pay attention to her?

Somehow, this made Hermione very happy. The prospect of Harry having feelings for Ginny made her feel very hopeful, the very opposite of the thoughts she'd had about Cho for the previous two years. Cho was sweet, but not right for Harry. Ginny on the other hand…

She smiled to herself at the possibility. The rest of the meal she spent happily watching the two of them playfully tease each other, ending with each standing up to return to the common room, and tapping Ron on the shoulder and dragging him-plus-one along too. Hermione had almost entirely forgotten to ask Harry about his saviour theory until he stopped her, letting the others go on ahead to the dormitories.

"Okay, first, I've told you about my theory of Draco Malfoy becoming a Death Eater during the holidays?" Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. This again. "No, listen. I've been watching him on the Marauder's Map for a while now. He sneaks out at night, and disappears off the map completely, and I've been trying to figure out where he's going without physically following him. Of course, this would be made easier if he'd just come out and at least tell his friends he's taken the Dark Mark, but still-"

"Your point, Harry?" Hermione raised an eyebrow expectantly. She'd already heard enough about this git over the summer, she didn't need to be hearing Harry's theories in the evenings, too.

"My _point_ is that I was watching him the night you sleepwalked. I saw your name and footprints on the map going up to the astronomy tower, and just as I was about to grab my cloak to find out what you were up to, I saw his name reappear, and he… he was following you."

There was a moment of silence.

"What?" All of Hermione's awful emotions from the nights she spent alone caught up with her as if they wanted revenge for the positive emotions she'd been feeling for the last few hours. The depression strangled her again, but instead of the normal words that cracked her skull inside her head, all she could hear was Harry's next sentence.

"I think _Draco Malfoy_ might have been the one who saved your life."


	3. Mistake

Draco Malfoy sat on top of a rickety five-legged stool with his face in his hands. His frustration seemed to radiate outwards, filling the empty space between himself and the black cupboard next to him. Why wouldn't the stupid thing just work? He'd been at this for weeks and had made virtually no progress whatsoever. The cabinet was stubbornly broken. He wanted to kick it.

Of course, with it just being a cabinet, it wouldn't be able to comprehend such complex things as anger, and so Draco's insistent ranting at it and threatening it to work achieved nothing except irritating him even more. Merlin, this beaten-up, ordinary looking cabinet could cause some powerful feelings of resentment. He wondered if he cursed loudly enough the cabinet would magically fix itself. This was the perfect room to shout and scream in, he supposed. No one to hear, and he was pretty sure no sound escaped. But just thinking about making an effort to shout his desperate annoyance out to the room managed to dissipate his motivation to.

His father, and more importantly, the Dark Lord were counting on him for this. The Dark Lord had called it a 'mission for simpletons', snidely insinuating once again that his family were too stupid to carry out important and complex missions without screwing it up completely. His father, now spending time in Azkaban after failing to retrieve a prophecy from the fifteen year old prick-who-lived, was the laughing stock of the Dark Lord's inner circle, and Draco had become their plaything. Draco took the Dark Mark in the place of his father, but he knew that swearing his loyalty to the Dark Lord would not get him off the hook so easily. His father was completely disgraced as a Death Eater, and Draco would be paying for his father's inadequacy. So, as he expected, Draco was given the near-impossible task of eliminating Albus Dumbledore, one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and creating a doorway into an impenetrable magical fortress. The punishment for failing, needless to say, was death for himself and his family.

Glancing at his watch, he realised it was once again gone one o'clock in the morning, and he ought to be going to bed if he had any chance of remaining awake during Professor Sprout's lesson tomorrow morning. As if her pathetic plants class was anywhere near as important. Carefully casting the Disillusionment Charm on himself, he threw a moth-eaten blanket over the top of the cabinet, hiding it in case anyone decided to come snooping. His night-time wanderings had allowed him plenty of practice at Disillusioning himself, so when he exited the Room of Requirement with caution, shutting the door centimetre by centimetre, he was almost completely invisible to the naked eye. He'd been a lot more careful about hiding correctly after Potter had figured out that it had been him to give the cursed necklace to the Gryffindor Chaser last month.

As he turned to walk towards the centre of the castle, where the dungeons held his dormitories, he heard fast steps echoing along the corridor, getting louder. Someone was getting closer! Immediately his heart pounded and he darted soundlessly towards the large suit of armour a little walk away from where he was stood and hid, disguised by both the Disillusionment Charm and the shadows. He held his breath, watching the figure round the corner and carry on. She wasn't glancing around suspiciously, so his presence seemed to have gone unnoticed by her, and it was when she was only a few feet away from him that he realised who he was looking at. He'd know that tangled mess of hair anywhere.

The Mudblood Granger was wandering around forbidden corridors in the middle of the night! His heart stopped briefly when the thought crossed his mind that she was a Prefect, and perhaps she was looking to catch him. Then he remembered that not even his roommates knew he was out of bed, so she certainly wouldn't, and she hadn't seemed particularly cautious as she'd turned the corner. But she was in a hurry; he could hear her breathing as she passed, stuttered and shallow. He only got a glimpse of her face as she rushed past, but he thought he might have seen a tear.

 _Finally_ , he thought, _something good_. He smirked as he followed her, silent as a panther, rehearsing in his head all of the ways he could hold her tears against her, making bets on whether it was Scarhead or the Weasel who had upset her this time. He decided it was the Weasel, he'd spent every day for the last six weeks with his tongue down that Brown girl's throat. Maybe the Mudblood had gotten her feelings hurt thinking he'd been interested in her. Draco's smirk grew wider. _Pathetic._

She ran to the top of the staircase, her bare feet hitting the cold stone stairs, her hair lank but still bouncing. As she reached the top step, she threw the door open and ran across the room, opening the window and letting freezing November air sweep through the room. He didn't understand anything he was seeing whilst he stood watching the bizarre behaviour of the familiar mudblood. Her skin must have been ice-covered; he noticed she was only wearing a white night dress and a pair of shorts, not nearly enough to keep the cold at bay. Once the window was letting in the brisk wind, she sank slowly to the ground and placed her head between her knees.

" _Breathe_. _Breathe_." She was whispering to herself, clearly unaware that she was making any noise at all. She sat like this for around three minutes, rocking slightly, with Draco just observing from the shadows. He'd been so sure of his own actions once he'd caught up to her, but her strange, erratic behaviour had distracted him. He was more curious to know what exactly she was doing. She looked like she was having a breakdown or something. He focused on her face, the first time he ever had, without counting just after she'd hit him in third year and he'd stared at her more in disbelief and anger than curiosity. But now… Curiosity was winning. Even his anger at his failed cabinet-mending seemed to be at the back of his mind. He'd never seen anyone act like this, let alone ever seen the brains of the reckless trio so out of control. His curiosity won over even the idea of making fun of her, as entertaining as it would be.

Just at the moment when Draco wondered if he should just leave her alone, find something else to preoccupy himself with, she snapped her head up. Draco froze in place, sure she'd noticed him stood there watching her like some kind of pervert. But her eyes were unfocused, and when she got to her feet, he suddenly realised that her crying was more serious than he'd thought; she was in big trouble. Her tears had stopped. She used her knee to climb up onto the sill of the tall window and she braced herself on the window frame, holding firm against the relentlessly cold breeze.

 _What in the name of Merlin's saggy left was she doing?_

Her eyes, unfocused until now, looked upwards at the moon, seeming to embrace the glow as if it was her last moment on the planet…

 _Oh._

And in that split second, only that fraction of a moment, he wasn't the Pureblood Malfoy. He wasn't the spoilt, handsome Slytherin. He wasn't the intelligent, superior son of Lucius Malfoy, revered and feared by many. He wasn't a Death Eater. He was just a boy.

And she wasn't the Mudblood Granger. She wasn't the know-it-all bookworm. She wasn't the ugly, self-righteous, stuck up muggle who disgusted him. She was just a girl.

And she was stepping off the edge of a windowsill to her death.

He moved faster than he knew he could, time drifting so slowly he thought he could hear it. His arm reached out before he was halfway across the room, whilst her foot was still hanging out into open air. He was sure he could feel every muscle in his arm stretch towards her, human to human. His other hand braced itself on the dreaded stone windowsill without any command from his brain, still trapped in slow motion. His other arm reached around her ribs, the only thing strong enough to stop her from falling, so slowly, just as she made that tiny jump. Her ankles had barely passed below the windowsill before he was hauling her back inside the window. He heard the crack of her arm against the wall as he dragged her bodily onto the floor, and another crack as her head hit the stones. His arm had shielded most of the blow, but she was unconscious now.

 _What do I do now?_

Without really thinking about it, he did the only thing his brain could process doing. He shot two red sparks out of the open window, shifting her body to lean against his so her head wasn't hanging limply.

" _Help! HELP!_ Somebody help!" He shouted at the top of his voice, the loud noise of the echoes seeming to startle his head back into working order.

Within two minutes of firing the sparks, Draco heard a flurry of panicked footsteps racing up the stairs, and before long the weary but alert faces of Professor Mcgonagall, Professor Snape, and Professor Dumbledore graced the doorway.

And time returned to normal.

The look on Snape's face was enough to let him know of the magnitude of stupidity he had embraced. But Severus didn't know what had happened, surely once he had a chance to explain… Explain what? He'd just saved a Mudblood's life for no other reason than he forgot she was a mudblood. He'd forgotten for a second she was his enemy's best friend. That was a terrible excuse and he knew it. Why couldn't he explain himself?

He had to come up with a lie. Fast.

"What- What on earth…?" Professor Mcgonagall looked dumbfounded.

"She-she was sleepwalking! I heard a crash coming from the Entrance Hall from the dungeons. I went to investigate, because as a Prefect I felt it-it was my responsibility. I saw Granger walking towards the stairs and I went to stop her, but I-I got caught at the changing staircases. By the time I caught up she was on the seventh floor heading towards the astronomy tower and I couldn't stop her. She got onto the windowsill and slipped. I knocked her head on the floor trying to stop her falling." He stuttered through his lie, but he felt it may have made it more convincing.

The three professors stood motionless; Severus's eyes were calculating, and Dumbledore's were searching.

"Very well, we should get her to the hospital wing immediately." Dumbledore's ever calm atmosphere cooled the tension in the air, whilst Professor Mcgonagall whispered the levitating spell and carried the unconscious girl warily down the winding stairs. Dumbledore's twinkling blue eyes, hidden slightly behind half-moon glasses, met Draco's piercing grey ones, for less than a second, before he turned to follow the two others. That tiny moment of eye contact seemed to tell Dumbledore much more than Draco wanted him to know.

Left at the top of the astronomy tower were Draco and Professor Snape. Severus eyed him like a serpent eyed its prey. To Draco's surprise, the potions professor did not look disgusted, only intrigued.

"The girl managed to sleepwalk up six flights of stairs before you reached her… Remarkable. Truly." Draco stared him down defiantly. Severus's mouth curled into an unpleasant grimace. "Don't worry. This little… misdemeanour will go no further than us, I assure you. However, I implore you, Draco. Be more careful, I cannot cover your mistakes forever. People are more than suspicious after your… blunder with Katie Bell."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Draco defended stubbornly. They both knew he was lying, but his Occlumency meant that Snape couldn't prove it. Snape walked towards him, his black, cold eyes meeting Draco's from ten centimetres away.

"Learn to cover your own tracks, Draco. I don't need to remind you of the consequences." And he strode towards the door, his long black cloak whipping around the corner and out of sight before Draco could move. A cold sweat formed on his forehead. His mother's life was on the line with this mission, as well as his own. He forced his feet to move.

Draco walked back to his dormitory in a stupor, worrying intently about what would happen if Severus decided to tell the Dark Lord about this. He made a stupid, amateur mistake; he allowed a Mudblood to live, a mudblood who the Dark Lord would very much want dead. _Why?_ He'd had the perfect opportunity to let her die. And it wouldn't have even been his fault. His confusion and anger at himself made his resolve all the stronger.

No one was to find out what had really happened that night. Ever.


	4. Regret

Granger had been in the hospital over half of the week now. The Slytherins didn't outwardly pay much greater attention to her disappearance than to be grateful she wasn't sticking her hand in the air every few seconds to answer questions. Inwardly, though, Draco knew everybody was paying the same amount of attention to it as he was; Harry Potter's best friend, no less, was in the hospital wing and no one knew why.

In times of this much tension, with a war on the brink of breaking loose, every mystery casualty was regarded with a huge amount of suspicion. Of course, nobody had reason to suspect he had anything to do with it, but the Slytherins with known Death Eater parents appeared to be under much greater scrutiny from the other houses. He could feel their eyes on him and his friends, watching the Slytherins cautiously wherever they went, but looking away if he stared back. It was very irritating. He was almost pleased to see that ridiculous bush of hair wandering towards the Gryffindor table that evening. At least it meant that the intense heat would be removed from the gazes of the other students.

He watched her as she walked with the female Weasel to where her brother and Potter were seated. She seemed… happy. Odd. Not that he cared as long she kept her nose out of his business. The fact that she'd been unconscious when he'd last seen her eased his fear a little; at least she herself didn't know he'd had anything to do with it, and that suited him just fine. The only people he'd have to watch were the three professors spread out at the table at the head of the hall.

He glanced at each of them. Professor Mcgonagall's lips moved but he couldn't for the life of him understand what she was saying to Professor Dumbledore. He was leaning slightly to his right, nodding with a slight smile to what she was saying. He paid them no mind as his observation turned to Severus. His godfather's expression was unreadable but his eyes bored into Draco's. He knew he would be speaking with him face-to-face again soon enough. He sighed. Their conversations were always a dull, anxious experience. Looking away, he glanced briefly back to Granger's table where Potter was speaking to her, their faces close together in a private conversation. He knew his old self, from last year or previous, would find a way to make fun of this, make jokes about Scarhead and the Mudblood's secret relationship, but he had far more important things to focus on right now.

Like that bloody broken cabinet hidden in the Room of Requirement at that very minute. He glowered at his mashed potatoes just thinking about it. He couldn't figure it out. The spells he was performing were done perfectly, but it appeared the path to the other side, the cabinet in Borgin and Burke's was blocked at his end. He had to figure out what exactly was blocking it. He half-jokingly wondered if he should try a simple drain-unblocking charm on it, and he figured it couldn't hurt. Thinking of all the other things that he could attempt to unblock the path and clear away some of the magical clutter, he rose from the table, ignoring the pull of Pansy's arm in his. He hadn't even realised she'd been holding it, but he shook her off and left the table, Zabini, Crabbe, and Goyle close behind him. He almost missed the look Potter gave him as he left. Almost.

* * *

Spending as little time in the common room that evening before feigning tiredness and retreating to his bed, he had to spend around two hours waiting for his idiot friends to get into bed and start snoring before he Disillusioned himself and walked on a mission back to the Room of Requirement. He must have spent another two and a half tired hours desperately combing through thick tomes of household spells searching for unblocking charms, finding only very few, all of which did exactly nothing. His frustration grew, but he refused to relinquish control of himself to it; the astronomy tower night wasn't something he was looking to repeat. He sighed. Another day wasted.

Reaching the Slytherin common room in the dungeons after dinner the following evening, he took an armchair in front of the fire, lazily watching the Giant Squid float around in the lake through the huge window to his left. This was the only time he really had to relax. He had classes all day, studying after dinner, and then working on that damned vanishing cabinet well into the night. By the time he got to bed most nights, he was far too tired to really relax, only to sleep and wake up and repeat the same pattern. It was exhausting. Zabini took the seat next to him, scaring off the weedy looking third years who had been sat there previously. _He'd never been that small, had he?_ Crabbe and Goyle assumed positions near the stairs, enough to prevent the other students from lingering around where Draco and Blaise were.

"You been invited to Slughorn's party?"

"Was I ever invited into the Slug Club before?"

"Fair point. I'm still deciding who to take. I'm stuck between Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis. I did wonder if Flora or Hestia Carrow had invited you though. I think they're both going."

"No, I'm not going. Wouldn't want to anyway, being voluntarily surrounded by Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors all night at a party run by one giant blood traitor? No, thanks."

"No need to be bitter, mate. It's an exclusive thing." Zabini smiled smugly and Draco glowered.

"Shut up. Like I said, you're in for a night of arse-kissing a blood traitor and foul-smelling quiches. Whereas I'm going to be sat here-"

"Shaking Pansy off your arms and studying for Herbology." Blaise interrupted, having stolen the textbook out of Draco's bag, abandoned on the table in front of them.

"Is there a reason we're still friends? I can't seem to recall any." Draco glared at his friend, snatching back the textbook.

"I didn't say it was a bad thing. I'll need to study, too. Looks like our resident pain-in-the-arse is back in business. Say goodbye to being the smartest in class for once." Zabini remarked. Draco should have expected this, Granger had been the hot topic of conversation nearly all week.

"How were you ever smartest in class?" He retorted.

Zabini glared at him. "I was talking about you, you prick. With Granger gone, you were top."

"Well unless she was dead she was going to come back at some point. Can't keep the mudblood away from classes for long, the professors would probably cry." Draco smirked and Zabini chuckled in response. "Anyway, what does it matter? Everyone knew she was coming back, I was never top."

"Well some people didn't think she would be coming back. I, for one, hoped she wouldn't be."

"Who would have known? No one knows why she was in the hospital wing in the first place." Draco looked down at his lap, picking at a tiny loose thread at the seam near his knee.

"Wrong."

Draco's mind snapped to full attention, but he was practiced at being subtle; his body made no move of surprise. "What have you heard?" Draco's tone was casual, and he gave a deliberate smirk towards Zabini.

"I was sat behind a certain bumbling Weasel this afternoon in Potions. Not that you noticed when you took the table with Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy without leaving me a seat." Zabini looked at him pointedly. There was a moment of silence.

"Are you expecting an apology?" Draco's eyebrows raised.

"Whatever. Anyway, I… happen to have overheard a conversation between him and Longbottom. If you're interested."

"Not unless you decide tell me in this current century, Zabini." Draco knew he was trying to draw out the fact that he knew more than Draco did. He'd have done the same if circumstances were halfway normal; it was a Slytherin thing.

"Alright, keep your pants on, I'm getting to it. Longbottom was asking about why she'd been in the hospital, and Weasel replied with 'sleepwalking'. Ha! How much effort do you think he put into that lie?"

Draco forced a laugh he hoped sounded believable. "None whatsoever. But Weasley's not much of a liar, is he? So maybe he's telling the truth. Sounds like the sort of ridiculous situations those idiots get themselves into all the time."

Zabini looked at him with disbelief. "You can't be serious?"

Draco shrugged. "I've got more important things to think about than whether the slug-swallower's lying about his miserable mudblood."

"I think you're wrong. He's lying, I'd bet your arse. They're up to something." Blaise narrowed his eyes.

"What's new? And bet your _own_ arse, _I_ don't care."

"Since when?"

"Since when what?"

"Since when don't you care what Scarhead and Weasel and the Mudblood are up to?"

"You already know 'since when', Zabini." Draco flashed him a significant look and played with the hem of his left arm sleeve. The warm and relaxed atmosphere had suddenly turned much more dark and meaningful.

Zabini stayed silent for a while.

"So is this your way of telling me then?"

"Does it really need saying out loud?"

"Yeah, actually, it would be nice to hear it from you instead of whispered rumours from the likes of Crabbe and Goyle and Nott."

"You know better than to believe anything about me that you didn't hear from me yourself. Inferior people will say anything to drag people like us through the mud." Something his father had taught him early on.

"Well, I didn't hear it from you. I still _haven't_ heard it from you. And I think as your friend I have a right to know when you've been…" He lowered his voice dramatically. "When you've been called on a mission by You-Know-Who!"

"Be quiet!" Draco looked around the room. Thankfully, there was no one left to overhear except Crabbe, Goyle, and a couple of Seventh Years who weren't paying them any attention at all. "This stays between us, Zabini. You understand."

"I understand. So are you going to tell me what you're doing?"

"No." Draco said, bluntly. Zabini pursed his lips, but nodded. He knew he was better off not getting involved anyway; his mother wasn't a Death Eater and he had no part in the war, meaning he had no alliance. Draco couldn't afford to release extremely important Death Eater information to non-inner-circle Death Eaters, even his friends. It was simply too dangerous. Crabbe and Goyle were off the table as well, but as both of them together couldn't tell one end of a lit candlestick from the other, he thought he was probably safe from them asking.

"Right. Well, I'm knackered, I'm going to bed. You coming?" Zabini stood and stretched.

Draco shook his head. "You go on ahead." He watched as the two Seventh Years ambled upstairs to their dormitory. Crabbe and Goyle had given up standing around doing nothing when there were so few people in the room and had disappeared upstairs a while ago.

When Draco had seen the last of Zabini's cloak vanish through their dormitory door, he stood, stretching out his limbs, and quietly exited the common room. Stealthily wandering along the corridors under a disillusionment charm, the journey was so familiar that it was almost automatic. Back to that blasted cabinet.

* * *

That night, it was nearly half past one before Draco finally threw in the towel. Frustrated, but still determined, he returned to his dormitory with nothing but a head full of useless household spells. Climbing into bed, he realised he may have to start brainstorming another game plan in case this one fell through. _Yay_ , he thought to himself. _Yet more pressure to put myself under._

He thought back to dinner the previous evening, how Potter had looked at him. The same look Severus had given him before that. Why did people keep looking at him like that? He supposed he was acting differently. He'd hoped that his new subdued attitude would either go unnoticed or would be chalked up to just growing older. It seemed it hadn't been. Not to mention his indiscretion in saving the life of a girl he hated not yet a week ago. He realised, though, that his appearance must have changed some too, with his stress and lack of sleep, he must be thinner and paler. He'd been sleeping in so late in the mornings that he hadn't had time to arrange his hair into its normal slicked back style because of getting into bed late the nights before, so even his hair would have changed.

Everything that he knew about himself was being called into question as of late, and he didn't like it. He cursed his father for getting himself caught. That was where it all started, when he had to take the Dark Mark. Now, he was too different from last year, so much so that people had noticed. So much that he'd performed an act of mercy on a person he'd always despised for reasons he could not explain. _Why? Why had he done that?_

But he cut himself off after asking the question. It didn't matter. It was done. He'd have to watch his potions professor carefully. And Granger. But as for any of the details about that night, they were better off forgotten; the Dark Lord's Legilimency could easily retrieve them if not. So why was it so hard to put out of his mind the look on the Mudblood's face?

 _No._ He told himself firmly. Pushing the thought away, he rolled over resolutely, and eventually drifted off into a calm, dreamless sleep.


	5. Beginning

Attempting a suicide has a way of opening one's eyes.

Hermione wasn't okay, even after her incident, but she was much more aware of the people around her and the impact she had. She was much less focused on the negative connotations of what others said, and she was trying harder to see herself in a more positive light. She'd realised after the first couple of days in her friends' company that possibly the things she had taken unquestioningly as true, such as her friends not noticing whether she lived or died, were just her view of herself projected onto others. It was not her friends who hadn't cared if she'd died; it was her herself.

Hermione's days consisted of what she now realised was a much more normal routine. It had been five days since she'd come out of the hospital wing, and Ginny, Harry, and Ron's attitude towards her remained much warmer. She continually wondered in her darker moments how long it would last, but figured that if it was going to eventually stop, she should appreciate their friendship whilst she had it. Although her routine was much more normal, her emotions were still fragile. She would frequently put a smile on her face when she didn't genuinely feel it, however, she thought that the fact that she was making an effort to try anyway was a step closer to normal than she had been before. She knew this positive attitude would take a long time to adjust to before it became really sincere.

She was also making a more concentrated determination to join in on conversation, particularly when it came to Harry's private lessons with Dumbledore. They'd had their second lesson some weeks ago, back when Hermione wasn't listening, but now that she was, she felt she should become more a part of the group again to figure out where Dumbledore's lessons were going with Tom Riddle's story. The last thing she needed was to be absent on Harry's ongoing battle against Voldemort. The pressure of this, the prospect of their small band of students fighting one of the most powerful dark wizards alive, threatened to bring her down to the ground emotionally again, but she slowly realised that when she spoke, the three others didn't ignore her like she'd expected them to. They listened to what she had to say, and this wasn't a new thing like their warmth towards her was. She supposed in the low of the moment she'd overlooked their dependence on her intelligence, because she'd genuinely felt they hadn't cared about what she had to say unless it was regurgitated from a book. Only now she recognised that this wasn't the case; she was the most logical of the group, and her opinion was not only valid, but probable in their eyes.

Despite Harry's theory and proof, Hermione simply did not believe that Malfoy had been anywhere near her and an open window without pushing her out of it, let alone pulling her back in when she'd been on the edge of killing herself whilst 'sleepwalking'. But she couldn't provide an answer when Harry asked who else could possibly have done it. Harry swore that they were the only people at the top of the astronomy tower that night, but perhaps someone could have disguised themselves? Harry persistently reminded her that the map couldn't be lied to or tricked, as proven by Barty Crouch Jr the year before last. On the other hand, Harry couldn't give an explanation for why Malfoy would have done it, except that he did. She was mentally torn.

Until she'd managed to break through this psychological muddle and come up with an answer that made sense, Hermione had made Harry promise to tell no one of his knowledge. Not just to avoid the uproar it would cause among students if it was found out, but also because Hermione recognised that if Harry really was right about Malfoy becoming a Death Eater over the summer, he'd possibly face much, much more dire consequences than embarrassment around school. And she had to find out what had really happened that night before she could knowingly allow him to face either of those penalties.

She preferred to ponder these things, try to really think everything through, whilst sitting on the familiar and yet unfamiliar window ledges late at night. This was a habit she had gotten herself into, and strangely, she felt unwilling to give it up. Even though she was trying harder to interact with her friends and express her thoughts and feelings, she enjoyed this time to contemplate things on her own, with no one around to interrupt. This was until the fifth night out of the hospital wing, when she ran into a stern-looking Ginny as she intended to leave the common room like she so regularly did.

"Where are you going?" The redhead's hands settled on her hips, and Ginny looked at her with a look that so resembled her mother, Molly Weasley, that Hermione was actually nervous for a moment. She didn't answer. "Because I think you're leaving the common room on one of your famous 'sleepwalks' again. Didn't Mcgonagall put a lock on your door yet?"

"Not yet." Hermione replied quietly, avoiding the inevitable meeting of Ginny's eyes.

"I'm not an idiot, I know you're not sleepwalking, Hermione. And I know you haven't been for the last couple of months either." Hermione looked down at her bare feet.

"No." She mumbled.

Ginny's tone and eyes softened simultaneously. "Come here." She requested gently, patting the sofa in front of the fire and sitting down on it. Her Quidditch books were still strewn across the table, abandoned. Hermione realised that she didn't have much of a choice, and sat down next to her friend. "Please, Hermione. Tell me what's going on."

Hermione looked at her friend and saw, for the first time, a real awareness settle in her wide brown eyes. Her heart pounded so hard she thought Ginny may be able to hear it as she contemplated opening up and talking about how she'd felt for the first time, and what had really happened that night on the window ledge. She looked for any sign, any movement of her eyes, any twitch of her mouth, that would indicate that she was not really listening, but found none. Ginny's sudden attentiveness was almost intimidating. _Should I?_ She thought. _Can I, even?_

What if Ginny thought she was lying? What if she didn't believe how she'd really been thinking and feeling? Hermione knew this depth of thinking was unusual, so it was entirely possible that she wouldn't even consider that this was true. She wasn't sure how well she'd handle it if Ginny laughed at her, or told her that what she was feeling was impossible.

 _Worse, what if she thinks I'm crazy?_ The entire reason she'd lied to her professors and her friends in the first place was out of fear that they wouldn't understand her, and that they'd pack her off to the nearest hospital in a padded room. She knew in her heart she wasn't crazy. Would Ginny know that too? The real question was, if Ginny did think she was crazy, could she really feel worse than she did already? _Yes_ , she answered herself. That's why she'd ended up on the astronomy tower in the first place.

But looking at Ginny, she wondered how she could possibly keep it from her. The truth is, she knew that if she'd been successful the other night, and she'd made it to the ground, her friends wouldn't have been able to comprehend why. At least now she'd have the chance to explain exactly how she felt, and give them a chance of understanding. Ginny honestly looked like she wanted to. But how could she start? How could she explain this crevice, this cavern, that's appeared out of nowhere in her mind? How could she describe exactly what such intense sadness feels like? The anger, or the loneliness, or more than all of the others, the void? The lack of feeling or motivation was worse than any of the emotion. How could she possibly understand? These questions plagued her until she began to feel the familiar tightness in her chest, and the beating of her heart grew louder… and louder.

She had to.

Drawing in a deep breath, she finally decided to take the chance.

"I've been so lonely. My parents are miles and miles away, too wrapped up in their jobs to reply to my letters half of the time. And then with Harry off stalking Malfoy and taking important, private lessons with Dumbledore, and Ron constantly being around that irritating bimbo, and you studying for your O.W.L.s and practicing for the Quidditch pitch… I felt so left behind. So alone. All I had left was my studies, and then Harry got that damned graffitied Potions textbook and started beating me at that, too. I started to feel like the only reason I was with you at all was to recite passages from books when you needed it and because you were the only ones in school who didn't laugh at me to my face." Hermione's eyes were full of tears and she was finding it difficult to stop talking now that the dreaded door had been opened. "I started to see myself how I thought others saw me. Worthless, ugly, a know-it-all. I always thought that I was just excelling at something I loved, but I realised that other people saw it, saw _me_ , as pretentious and stuck up.

"This only got worse when Ron decided to stick his tongue down that idiot Lavender's neck, because honestly I thought that he… well, that he'd had… he'd had some affection for me. But obviously I was wrong. I stopped trying to talk because I thought no one was listening. I thought… no one cared…." Her words caught at the lump in her throat, but her tears came freely now. Ginny had still not replied, and Hermione had seemed to just burst with emotion that she needed to get out of her. Emotion she'd been withholding for weeks. "I didn't sleepwalk. I went to the astronomy tower that night because I couldn't handle it any more. I didn't go up there knowing what I was about to do, but… I jumped out of the window willingly. I wanted to… or at least, I felt like I had no other choice, and no one who cared."

Ginny said nothing for many minutes. Nothing at all. She simply wrapped her arms around Hermione's shoulders and held her, tears streaming down her own face as her friend, her closest female friend, sobbed uncontrollably. It was around ten minutes later when Hermione's breath was beginning to return to normal that Ginny finally broke the awful, tear-stained silence.

"Merlin, Hermione. I love you so much." Hermione drew her eyes slowly up to Ginny's face, seeming guarded against accepting the affection as real. Ginny seemed to know this just by looking back at her. Meeting Hermione's eyes directly, she continued. " _So much_. I had no idea you were feeling so low, and I'm so unbelievably sorry for contributing to it. I really didn't know. And I know that I can't magically make you feel somehow better, no matter how much I want to. Trust me, I would do pretty much anything right now if it would make you okay again." Ginny paused then, as if to prepare for a long, difficult moment in her life.

"I want you to listen to me very carefully, Hermione Granger. You are the strongest, most independent, intelligent, and beautiful girl I have ever had the fortune to come across, and I am _begging_ you… don't ever change. I've always admired and respected you. The way you ignore every comment from morons like Malfoy that are thrown your way, and the way you hold your head high and learn from your mistakes. You consistently rise to every single academic challenge, and the way you logically connect dots in any situation so easily without ever losing your calm astounds me.

"I love you exactly the way you are, Hermione. And so does Harry, and so does Ron, although they can be excruciatingly slow on the uptake sometimes and they get very wrapped up in their own worlds. They love you. I won't tell them what we've talked about tonight, but I think maybe, when the time's right, you could try. I think they'd understand." Hermione looked intensely at Ginny, searching for some sign of insincerity, and Ginny smiled gently back, tears still lingering on her lashes. There was silence for another long stretch, but the silence was welcome. Hermione was allowing these words to sink in, acknowledging the truth evident in Ginny's eyes and tone, and she knew deep down this really was Ginny's heart speaking.

Hermione hadn't realised exactly how much she'd needed to hear all of this until that moment.


	6. Taken

Exactly a month later, on Friday the thirteenth of December, the calm and excited attitudes of the students were in full swing anticipating the start to the Christmas holidays in only a week's time. Professors struggled to reign in concentration even as January exams drew nearer, with the exception, of course, of the familiar bushy-haired bookworm. Whilst every other student was preparing their trunks and exchanging presents and discussing their Christmas dinners, Hermione Granger spent most of her time holed up in the huge library, accompanied by Ginny. Ginny was now a regular aspect of Hermione's everyday life, but in accordance with Hermione's wishes, she left her alone when she was asked to. Ginny had been keeping an extra close eye on her friend since she'd found out the truth about her suicidal tendencies. Hermione, having spent the last month deliberately focused on improving her mental health bit by challenging bit, was in her own opinion much happier. Although she was still not 'better' and would not be for a long time, she had taken her life into her own hands… in a much more positive way than she had the previous month. _Progress,_ she kept repeating in a mantra to herself. _Just a little progress is all it takes._

However, Hermione's personal tensions were not alone on this particular morning. As Daily Prophets were dropped all over the hall during breakfast as they normally are, a rumbling of conversation, an unusually edgy kind, began throughout the long tables. Once the articles had been read, stares from all directions turned towards the Slytherin table, searching for a particular face. As Harry nudged Ron, wondering what all the fuss was about, Hermione hastily grabbed her newspaper from the school owl and fed the bird some cereal in return carelessly. Her eyes were too busy scanning the front page.

" **Suspects Held on Death Eater Accusations**

 _Known previous Death Eater associates Walden Macnair and Fletcher Goyle are currently being held at the Ministry of Magic for questioning, following many recent accusations of the two being personally involved in Death Eater activities. Macnair and Goyle were apprehended on their way into work yesterday morning after several anonymous tips, and whilst no arrests have presently been made, the suspects have been detained indefinitely._

 _Upon their arrival at the Ministry at precisely 8.57am and 9.00am on Thursday the twelfth of December, Department of Magical Law officers seized Walden Macnair and Fletcher Goyle under suspicion of performing nefarious acts. The anonymous tips gave the Magical Law team similar information, which was that the two individuals were not only involved with You-Know-Who and his criminal crowd, but that they were quite possibly a couple of his right-hand men. Macnair, a well-respected_ _Executioner for the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures at the Ministry of Magic, has been suspended from his job, causing a relatively large amount of backlog in his Department, however his position is being temporarily filled. Contrastingly, as a menial caretaker of the Ministry of Magic's Level 3 Departments, Goyle's employers have stated that they will replace him immediately and without delay._

 _Goyle has previously been accused of suspicious activity, yet the Ministry have let him walk freely since the First Wizarding War. An unnamed Ministry employee stated openly this morning the pitiful excuse on which the man has roamed at liberty for so long, that "there was a lack of significant evidence against Mr. Goyle and therefore it would have been both immoral and illegal to convict him." No comment has been given on Walden Macnair's criminal history, nor his records of previous employment."_

She scanned through the remainder of the article, although it appeared to be more of the same biased pointed comments at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement rather than actual news, and found the last line.

" _Article by Rita Skeeter."_

Of course. Hermione's eyes rolled in vexation, but found themselves quickly drifting in the same direction as everybody else's: to the empty seat next to Crabbe and Malfoy that was not occupied by Gregory Goyle, Fletcher Goyle's only son.

"What's going on?"

"Goyle's father's been taken in for questioning." She watched Harry, Ron, and Ginny all turn around to look at the Slytherin table.

Malfoy's face displayed clearly enough the discomfort he felt at being the subject of the entire hall's general stares, not that Ron had happened to notice. Harry, on the other hand, having been obsessing over Malfoy for the entirety of the year, and now even more so since he had saved Hermione, had noticed. Malfoy had seemed to hate any sort of attention this year, Harry had figured out, and this was unusual; he had spent the last five years trying to stand out. This more than anything had made Harry certain of Malfoy's initiation into the Death Eaters. Hermione knew this because Harry had been continually talking about it since they had seen him in Diagon Alley in the summer.

"When?" Ginny asked.

"Yesterday morning. Apparently he and a Walden Macnair have been taken in. Macnair was the executioner who almost beheaded Buckbeak after he scratched Malfoy, remember?"

Harry's face darkened. "How could we forget?"

The rest of the meal was spent in relative silence, each of them wondering to themselves how the rest of the school, the Death Eaters, and the wizarding society was going to handle the news of two more potential Death Eaters being taken down by the Ministry. If they really were Death Eaters, Hermione supposed there would be retaliation on their side soon enough, and depending on the severity, had the potential to begin the war that was inevitably coming. The thought filled her with dread, and a strange feeling of loss, as if she was already losing people she loved. In a way, she was. Her kind, muggleborns and their sympathisers of any blood purity, were already disappearing or being slaughtered every day. And that didn't even include the insurmountable number of muggles unknowingly living in fear and dying at the hands of people they didn't believe in. Hermione felt so helpless, but by the same token, she logically knew that the only way she could help them was to keep a clear head and help Harry wherever she could.

To do this, Hermione recognised that she had to start trusting Harry. She knew that she'd have to begin to believe in his instincts, and she saw they had very rarely been wrong before. The only times that Harry's gut feelings had failed him had been when he was manipulated, and Hermione, whilst incredibly rational, happened to have instincts that frequently failed her.

After breakfast, the four companions made their way upstairs to grab their bags and continue to their first lesson, Transfiguration. Professor Mcgonagall, as usual, was unperturbed by the recent news that had spread like wildfire throughout the school. She resolutely stuck to the curriculum despite the obvious strain in the attitudes of her class, particularly as the keen-eyed students had realised that Goyle had still not shown himself.

"Do you think he's been called back home because of his dad?" Harry asked Ron and Hermione as they gathered their things and exited the classroom. Hermione shook her head.

"I doubt it. With no evidence to arrest Mr. Goyle it would be too risky right now. I think the chances are that Dumbledore was told about his detainment and warned Goyle in advance. I reckon he's skulking about in his room because he doesn't want to face the rest of the students."

"Good, means we at least don't have to put up with him on top of the rest of the Slytherins today. One less snake to worry about." Ron stated conclusively.

"I don't think it's the Slytherins who we should be thinking about. I think it's their families and what they're going to do about the Death Eaters' members and how they keep getting themselves locked up." Harry said.

"I guess."

"I've wondered if there might be some backlash, more disappearances or something. But on the other hand, if Macnair and Goyle haven't been convicted, it means the Aurors have no proof that they're Death Eaters. Voldemort's followers are just as likely to lay low for now until something happens. Either they'll be charged or they'll be released." Hermione thought out loud.

"If they're arrested, it could be the trigger that starts a war." Harry echoed Hermione's previous thoughts.

"It could. It shouldn't be hard to figure out who's a Death Eater and who's not though." Ron said. "I mean, Death Eaters have great big tattoos on their arms, right?"

"Yes, but that's only the inner circle members, as far as we know." Hermione reminded him. Their conversation was immediately cut off at this point by the appearance of Lavender from seemingly nowhere to drag Ron off somewhere else, to which Hermione rolled her eyes in annoyance and kept her eyes firmly forward. Harry, increasingly observant, saw this.

"Still no luck finding a date for Slughorn's party?"

Hermione realised he must have thought her irritation had been about not finding a date when the couple she disliked seemed so happy together, and she wasn't about to tell him that she was actually just frustrated at Ron. She was sure he was only doing it to spite her.

"No. I've got a date in mind though. What about you? I've heard quite a few girls talking about trying to convince you to ask them. It's only a week away, bear in mind."

"I know, I know. I don't know who to ask, I barely understand you, let alone the rest of the female population of Hogwarts."

"Girls really aren't hard to understand, you know. But you should be careful. These girls are serious, I heard Romilda Vane in the girls' bathroom earlier talking about how she wanted to slip you a love potion."

"They're that interested in me?" Hermione knew Harry was often unlucky when it came to girls, and she was more sympathetic towards him when she found out that Ginny had agreed to go the Christmas Party with Dean as her date. She understood his surprise and flattery, but she couldn't let him fall into that trap solely because he hadn't had a girlfriend since Cho.

"They're only interested in you because they think you're the 'chosen one'!"

"But… I _am_ the chosen one." Hermione hit him with the huge book she'd been holding. "Sorry. Er, kidding."

"My point is, I would advise you to ask someone soon. You're no use to anyone if you're poisoned with a homemade love potion." Hermione's bossy nature, unseen for weeks, shone through for just a moment.

* * *

Later that evening, after having shaken Ginny off, Hermione decided to go for a walk before curfew had fallen. This was the compromise that Ginny had allowed; Hermione was free to go out and gather her thoughts when she felt she needed to, as long as she told Ginny she was going out and she had to be back before curfew. Despite Hermione's original protests, she finally decided this was fair, and agreed to be back before curfew fell each night. This system had seemed to work fairly OK for a while, and Ginny would remain in the common room to check she'd come back. Ginny had also made it very clear to Hermione that she didn't need to keep secrets from her; if she wanted to talk about something, anything, Hermione could come to her.

As she wandered down towards the Entrance Hall, Hermione's thoughts drifted from subject to subject, focusing mostly on the possible and probable outcomes of Goyle and Macnair having been taken. She thought of the best and worst possibilities, the war to come, and the unquestionable safety she felt under Dumbledore's roof.

"Petrificus Totalus!"

The irony of this last thought would not occur to her until much later.

Had there been any warning of what was about to happen, a footstep or creak of the floor, Hermione may have been able to pull out her wand in time. Instead, she felt her entire body freeze in place as she fell to the ground, her legs, and the rest of her muscles, reluctantly refusing her mind's commands. Her throat made no sound, and her eyes could not blink. And she watched her world go black as a piece of fabric was tied over her eyes, her attackers unknown.


	7. Ungrateful

Draco sat impatiently in his room, once again waiting for Goyle, Crabbe, Zabini, and Nott to go to sleep so that he could proceed in his quest to fix that cabinet, still broken in the Room of Requirement. He'd given up on trying to unblock it; he was now desperately searching for books that would tell him how these magical passages were formed, so he could possibly make a brand new one to connect the two cabinets again. He was so stressed he thought that his appetite had halved, and he looked more like a wilted plant than ever. The Christmas holidays were only a week away, and if he didn't have some proof of progress by then, he might find himself on the receiving end of a Cruciatus Curse. The Death Eaters were no doubt on full alert after the imbeciles Fletcher Goyle and Walden Macnair were stopped, and there seemed to be a fifty percent chance of them being arrested.

Goyle had spent the entire day in the common room, ranting and raving, breaking things, and scaring first years, but none of it had made anyone feel any better. After he had refused to go down for dinner and made some of the house elves bring him huge plates of food instead, Draco was surprised when he had come back to find the common room empty. Except for the giant plates and food debris he had left, Goyle seemed to have just vanished. Draco hoped he would come back soon; it was almost curfew and he desperately wanted to get back to the Room.

As the minutes ticked by, he grew more and more frustrated. _Where was everyone?_ Crabbe, desolate without his companion, had retreated to bed early, and was currently lying behind his curtains snoring loudly. Zabini was also already in bed, not snoring, but his breathing, Draco had checked, indicated deep sleep. But the remaining two beds in their dormitory were left obstinately empty. Almost half an hour after curfew, Nott stumbled in, his footsteps and walking pattern telling Draco he had been sneaking into the kitchen to steal cooking wine with some of the Seventh Years again. He fell forwards onto his bed, and with his curtains open and his feet still hanging shoe-clad off of the side, began wheezing in sleep within minutes.

Only Goyle was left unaccounted for. Draco wondered casually whether other houses would be worried about their roommates being missing at this point, but he knew that Slytherins were never particularly sticklers for rules, and he was probably out in the kitchen stuffing his face with elf-made goods. When it had reached an hour after the curfew had come and gone, Draco decided he'd need to go without him being in the room and sound asleep. Too much time had been wasted already. However, as Draco picked up his wand to cast the Disillusionment Charm, he heard the wall to the common room open and close, and Goyle's heavy footsteps. His curiosity got the better of him, and he wandered downstairs to find Goyle, strangely, happy.

"What are you smiling about?" Draco's derisive tone displayed his confusion; Goyle's father had been held by the Ministry since yesterday morning and he was smiling? Something felt odd.

"Nothing." He replied, still grinning like an idiot. _Well_ , he thought, _he is an idiot._

"Then why are you smiling like someone just pulled the greatest Christmas present ever out of their arse for you?" To Draco's surprise, Goyle just began chortling.

"Nott told me I should." Goyle's chuckling became full-on laughter at this point.

"Nott told you that you should smile?" Draco looked at him as if he was mental.

"No! Nott told me I should… I should put her in the forest!" He got out between bursts of laughter. Draco experienced a sinking feeling in his chest, as if his ribs were being deflated.

"Put who in the forest?"

"Mudblood Granger!" Saying her name seemed to make him lose it completely. Draco worried he would wake up the rest of the dormitories.

"You put Granger in the forest?"

"Yeah! Left her there, all tied up like a Christmas present!" Goyle choked, doubled-up.

"Are you a complete and total moron?" This confused Goyle enough to stop his amusement for a moment.

"What d'you mean?"

"The whole Ministry's out to prosecute your father and you're leaving the prick-who-lived's precious mudblood out in the forest tied up?"

"I don't get it. The mudbloods locked up my father, they need to be taught a lesson."

Draco made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat. No doubt he would get the blame for this enormous screw-up as well as his own.

"Of course you don't understand. I won't bother, I'm going to go and find the mudblood and let her go, and you will find yourself becoming something very unpleasant should you follow me."

"Wait, no, don't!"

"Stay here!" Draco lost his temper. "Can't you comprehend even a tiny bit how Perfect Mudblood Granger turning up dead in the forest will make all of us look? Slytherins and Death Eaters are under enough suspicion as it is, that's why your father's been taken. If a muggle dies under Dumbledore's roof now it will expose everyone who follows the Dark Lord. It could be enough to start a war, and only our Master can decide when that happens. He needs us to stay hidden, and to do that… you can't kidnap the mudblood!"

He trudged out of the room, looking thunderous, before realising he should have asked where in the forest Goyle had put her. Too late, he marched out of the Entrance Hall and onto the grounds. He was lucky he hadn't encountered anybody; in his fury at Goyle's idiocy, he'd forgotten to place the Disillusionment Charm on himself and he would have been in a lot of trouble. Fortunately, he didn't see another soul before reaching the edge of the forest. _What do I do now?_ He thought. _Do I call out for her? Don't be stupid._ He supposed he'd have to find her the good, old-fashioned way: look.

* * *

For a long hour he searched for the mudblood. Whilst he searched he flicked between two different types of angry thoughts; one set around Goyle and his ultimate stupidity, no matter how much he may have been emotionally inclined at the time. He was angry about the fact that somebody else's actions, somebody who was in fact supposed to be on his side of the battle, had caused him to lose a valuable night of work on the cabinet, the one task the Dark Lord had given him, or else.

The other set of angry thoughts revolved around the girl for whom he was searching. She seemed to keep dragging him into ridiculous situations whether she intended to or not. Situations that, if uncovered, could get him and the people he cared about killed. He was risking his own and his mother's, and possibly his father's, lives to rescue for the second time a girl who he had despised before even meeting her. The loathing had only increased since then, but never to this level of hatred. He hated her for making him save her, because really he had no choice this time. He utterly refused to think about the choice he'd made the last time.

Finally noticing the quiet increasing as he drew towards a particular area of the woods, he realised that the animals in this particular patch of land were all quiet. He figured that this was as good a place as any to start; the Forbidden Forest wouldn't have been this noiseless without reason. Thankfully, only a few metres in, he heard what he assumed were the sounds of a frustrated girl desperately trying to free her hands from binds, and followed them until he was greeted with the sight of her sat on the forest floor, blindfolded, and with her hands tied behind her back. 'Great witch' indeed.

He watched her silently for a while, relishing in her anger and her clear theory that no one was watching. In much the same way as on the tower, Draco seemed captivated by the raw humanness of a person who believes they are truly on their own. This time, however, Draco knew he must keep his wits about him. He couldn't be lost to curiosity and forget himself again. She'd clearly been doing this for a while, and the fury emanating from her was almost tangible. _Good,_ s _he deserves it after everything that's happened to him because of her. And everything that could still happen._ He thought. _And also because she'd a mudblood anyway_ , he amended.

"Ouch!" She shouted out loud when she'd ended up flinging her wrists around uselessly behind her, and accidentally hitting a tree trunk knuckles first. Draco sighed inwardly. He supposed if he was going to have to do this, he may as well get it over with.

"Granger." Draco said, enjoying seeing her physically jump at the unexpected sound of his voice.

"Who- who is that?" Hermione asked tentatively.

"Who does it sound like, brainless?"

"Well, it sounds like Malfoy, but unless you're here to laugh at me and leave me here, I don't know why. And if you were here to laugh at me and leave, you made a long journey for something so petty." She had the audacity to provoke someone who was here to free her? Draco felt his anger rise already.

"Well, as it happens, I'm not here to laugh and leave. I'm here to let you go." He waved his wand carelessly at her blindfold, taking it off of her in order to see the look of disbelief and suspicion mixed with shock on her face.

"Why on Earth would you want to do that?"

"Not for selfless reasons should you by any possibility be thinking _that_."

She snorted derisively. "As if. What's in it for you?" Her eyes narrowed.

"Who is going to get the blame for this debacle if you turn up dead tomorrow morning, do you think?" He said, making his voice deliberately patronising. He knew exactly how to rile this mudblood up in return.

"Well, I'd hoped you and whoever you'd got to help you with this. But as you're letting me out, I guess I can eliminate you as the culprit?" He flicked his wand sloppily at the ropes on her wrist and severed them, purposely leaving her with a sharp scratch in the process. She made a small sound of pain and then simply looked at him with her temper ever more apparent in her eyes.

"Don't be so slow. It was Goyle. And they call _you_ the brightest witch of her age?" Her face reddened as he incited her. "You got outmatched by Goyle." He laughed loudly.

"I was wandless and ambushed!" She stood and brushed pine needles off of her clothes, glaring at him.

"Whatever makes you feel better about yourself. Although you might want to consider that fact that you are a Mudblood. Can't help." The smirk on his face grew as he turned back towards the castle.

"I didn't ask for your help, Malfoy! I can do anything that you can to defend myself and more, and you know it. I'd like to see you fight your way out of a situation without your wand or your daddy's money." As Draco's face became scarlet with anger and he opened his mouth to say something cutting, Hermione interrupted him. "And I could have handled myself pretty well if I had been wandless but prepared anyway, in case you've forgotten that I'm not afraid to physically hit out without my wand, too. Not only that, but I've been beating you at everything since we first arrived, despite my dirty blood! Weird, isn't it? If blood purity doesn't affect skill in any way, then how exactly does it make you better, Malfoy?"

Draco couldn't find words quickly enough. "How dare-"

"It also obviously doesn't affect your charm. Or your popularity. So tell me, O Enlightened One, precisely what is it that makes you so much better than me?"

Draco very badly wanted to tell her that he wasn't suicidal. So desperately he wanted to remind her that she had been the one stood on the edge of a window in a tower, and he hadn't been, that the words stuck to the end of his tongue and left a bitter taste in his mouth. But he couldn't. She had no idea it was him who had saved her life and it had to remain that way. His anger abating slightly at the reminder of the war he was fighting rather than this argument made him turn around and briskly walk back to the castle without another word. He was not giving up, and he was certainly stubborn and livid enough to have carried on, but he was brought up to understand tactics; he would concede this battle of wits in order to pursue winning the war.

And every single day he was regretting saving the life of that wretched girl even more.


	8. Heated

It was now only three days until Slughorn's Christmas party and Hermione had still not found a date. Candidly, she had thought that Ron would want to go with her, before Lavender had come along, but now she had no game plan. She had thought about it, but there seemed to always be more pressing things on her mind, like being attacked from behind, dumped in a forest, and rescued by someone she hated. Alternatively, she could have not been thinking about it due to her persistent negative thoughts that had not gone away, helped very little by Malfoy's insults.

Since her run in with Malfoy last week, she had been purposefully avoiding him, for fear she might strangle him. He had freed her, yes, but not for her. He'd made it hugely clear to her that he was doing it for selfless reasons only, and therefore she neglected thanking him and refused to be grateful. She was angry at his complete and utter lack of perspective; how could someone's point of view differ by such a wide margin from her own? How could someone possibly be so genuinely selfish?

But this is what had made her stop and think. She hadn't forgotten about the first time. Harry's theory and all the evidence pointed to it being him. As much as she despised him, she knew Malfoy, and she knew his behaviour. He was slipping lately, his looks had changed so much. His face, already pointed, looked sallow and even sharper. His eyes were sunken, and colder somehow. Something was going on with him. No Death Eater follower saves the life of a mudblood for no reason. He must have saved her then for the same reason as he'd saved her before: to stop himself falling under the bus. Hermione believed Harry now, Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. Now it was simply everything around that left to figure out. Why he had saved her life, twice, and what purpose that her life could possibly serve to the war when her own life seemed so useless to her. She would watch him from now on, much more carefully than before, and try to figure out exactly what was going through his head and why it was so crucial that she was still alive for now.

But first, a date to the party. And opportunity knocked with both fists that morning.

"Granger! Hermione, wait." Cormac McLaggen, the sore loser of the Quidditch trials who got on Ron's last nerve, was beckoning her in the hallway.

"Hi." Hermione said confusedly.

"Hi." He smiled brightly. He showed all of his teeth when he did that. There was an awkward silence for a moment. "So… When are you going to invite me to the party?"

"What?" Hermione's face wrinkled in misunderstanding.

"Come on. You've been playing hard to get for weeks now, avoiding me in the halls, and not coming to Quidditch practices with your friends." He trailed off.

"I have no interest in Quidditch."

"Everyone has an interest in Quidditch, you clearly just don't understand it enough." He looked as if he was about to explode into a detailed explanation of the game Hermione had understood for five years, so she cut him off.

"What were you saying about the party?"

"Oh. Yeah, well, I'm going, obviously, and you're going. And we've been running around at this game for a while, and it's only three days from now, so I'm wondering when you're actually going to ask me to be your date. The thrill of the chase is good, but the catch is better." He moved closer and Hermione took an automatic step back. She was mentally and physically utterly repulsed by this huge, mindless guy who talked to her as if she were stupid, but something inside her brain clicked. She had no date. He wanted to go with her. And there would be no one more frustrating to Ron to see her with than this idiot. She looked at him without speaking for a second. Could she survive spending one night with him in order to make her point to Ron?

"Pick me up from the common room at seven thirty." And she turned on her heel and strode away without another word.

Hermione regret this decision the second she'd stepped outside her dormitory that Friday evening. Having spent only around half an hour getting ready, knowing it would be him she was meeting, the vision of Cormac McLaggen did not raise her spirits. She thought she looked alright for the party, but then all she saw in the mirror were the tiny, unnoticeable places where the dress didn't fit right and her facial imperfections. She'd given up trying to impress herself and settled for just hoping no one else would notice. But the dress itself, knee-length, floaty pink fabric, was lovely. She hadn't bothered to do anything with her hair, simply left it down to hang around her shoulders in their normal curls. But she couldn't deny the small tingle of satisfaction she received by seeing McLaggen's jaw drop slightly.

She did her best to ignore his small talk on the way to Slughorn's office, knowing most of it was about Quidditch, how good he thought he looked, and a few generally sexist comments. Finally reaching Slughorn's door, she plastered a smile onto her face and linked arms with Cormac, having made sure to have kept a metre-wide berth and her mouth closed so far.

Entering the party, she saw the usually dull room livened by celebratory red and green and gold decorations and some floating glowing objects that she assumed were candles, put up by Slughorn to no doubt heighten the overall class of the affair. The set up made entering the room feel like entering a ginormous festive tent, centred by a huge hanging glass lamp with fairies glowing to illuminate what the candles weren't. The music emanating from the corner of the room was loud but pleasant, accompanying the buzz of conversation all over the room perfectly. She saw some unsuccessful Slug Club applicants handing out bits of food and wine from trays along with the house elves, including Neville. After an appropriate amount of time socialising with other guests in which Cormac spent around eighty percent of the conversation commenting on her appearance, she broke from her bigoted date to speak with Neville.

"Wine?" He said, coughing out some pipe smoke, before looking at her face and colouring in embarrassment.

"Hi, Neville. What are you doing handing out the drinks?"

"Didn't make the Slug Club. Clearly my genius doesn't shine through to him like it does to Professor Sprout."

"His approval doesn't define you. You're great, and you shouldn't be stuck handing out things for the invited guests. Have one yourself, at least."

"I will, thanks, Hermione." He smiled at her and moved off; Slughorn had looked in his direction.

Hermione spent a while wandering about the room enjoying the scenery and he general atmosphere before running into Harry, who had just arrived with his own surprising date.

"Harry! And Luna, lovely to see you."

"Thank you!" Luna's dreamy voice seemed to calm Hermione's nerves somewhat.

"Hermione!" Harry hugged her. "I decided to just ask Luna to come with me as friends. Saves on the hassle of asking someone and having to try and be charming and romantic all night." Harry chuckled, but Hermione saw his eyes dart around the room and knew he was looking for his red-headed crush. "So, er, who did you come with?"

Hermione tried her best to look happy, but she wasn't sure if her face displayed some of her displeasure. "McLaggen. Cormac. He was the one who-"

"I know who he is. He's been bothering me for weeks trying to get me to kick Ron off the team and assign him the Captain's position. What'd you bring him for?"

Luna had wandered off in the direction of the food, so she felt alright to tell him honestly. "I- I thought he would annoy Ron the most."

"Why would you want to annoy Ron?"

"You know why, Harry." Hermione sighed. "Now I wish I'd just left it alone."

"Is he irritating you as much as he irritates everyone else?"

"More. He's spent half of this evening trying to make me look stupid in front of everyone at the party that we spoke to and the other half trying to get his arms around me. I had to get away."

"You might have to do another disappearing trick." Harry's eyes looked over her shoulder, and before Hermione had a chance to escape, Cormac's arm was slung over her shoulder.

"Harry! Great to see you. I had another couple of ideas for the team and I thought that maybe we could talk about them some time."

"Well I'll just leave you two alone then-" Hermione said, smiling and pulling his arm off of her.

"No, no, I meant some other time." Hermione slumped.

"Well, I'll just leave you two alone then." Harry smirked at Hermione before sidling off to rejoin his date, talking to a tall, very pale man who looked awfully like a vampire by Hermione's reckoning. Hermione couldn't think of enough curse words to shout at Harry in that moment.

"Let's go for a walk." Cormac said suddenly. He moved the arm he had around Hermione's shoulder to wrap around her waist instead, making her extremely uncomfortable, and guided her out towards the door.

"But the party-"

"Will wait for us. I want to show you something." Hermione was getting sick and tired of him interrupting her, and was even more exasperated that he was currently removing her from the party without her permission. But she was in this deep, she decided she may as well find out what it was that he wanted to show her.

He led her to a balcony only a couple of corridors away from the party, and Hermione suspected he'd been trying to bring her here all along. The balcony itself was beautiful, as was everything at Hogwarts, the greying stones surrounding the veranda also made up a bench to look over the grounds. As they took a seat, Hermione noticed that looking over to the right of the balcony, she could see the ongoing party in Slughorn's classroom, and silhouettes dancing as she breathed in the cold night air.

"So." Cormac started. Hermione stayed silent. She was beginning to feel very uneasy about this encounter. "The sky's beautiful tonight, don't you think? Really clear. You can see so many stars."

Hermione used this excuse to break the eye contact between them and look up at the stars. "Yes. You can." She agreed awkwardly. They _were_ beautiful.

"It's a perfect night." Cormac said. Hermione didn't respond. She felt uncomfortable, and was just about to lie that she was cold and escape back indoors when she felt her face being pulled back downwards and her lips pressed against by his. The setting, his attitude, the atmosphere, all intended to be romantic, and yet Hermione was repulsed by this. She didn't give him permission, she hadn't indicated in any way that she was inviting this intimacy. She was shocked by his forwardness, and cross that he had assumed she'd be okay with this without checking or even waiting for some signal or hint that she wanted it. She was angry with this, with his unwelcome lips moving against hers, trying to force them to respond like he'd wanted. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to Hermione, he broke the kiss and smiled at her, as if he was the most successful man in the world. It seemed too much like gloating to her.

 _Slap!_

The force of her hand colliding with his cheek turned his head, and wiping that infuriating smile off of his face in two seconds flat. The second time she had ever slapped anyone shocked her just as much as the first time, and she was almost exactly as angry. The surprise of her not having enjoyed that kiss as much as him appeared to have stunned him for a few minutes, and Hermione took the opportunity to walk quickly off of the balcony and back into the deserted corridor.

Wandering around for a few minutes, she desperately tried to distract herself from the image of Cormac's smug face burned into her eyelids. How dare he? She realised how much angrier everything was making her now. She wondered if it was her brain somehow making up for the fact that she'd felt empty of emotion for so long. Either way, she was struggling to calm herself, her thoughts got more righteous and enraged with each minute.

Without concentrating, her furious walking attracted her to a whispered and heated discussion. Finally, something had distracted her from her own thoughts.

"I can feel you blocking my attempts to penetrate your mind, Draco. Something to hide, perhaps?" Hermione would know that voice anywhere, even in whispered form. Professor Severus Snape.

"Nothing that has anything to do with you." Malfoy's aggressive response surprised Hermione. Even though he was different, she wouldn't have guessed he'd be so rude to a professor.

"Congratulations. You've succeeded in learning Occlumency exceptionally."

"Well, I did have the best teacher." Somehow this hadn't sounded like a compliment. "Something that you have to hide? Professor." He added on the formality at the end. There was silence for a moment.

"I swore to your mother I'd protect you. I made the Unbreakable Vow, Draco. If you'd just let me assist you-"

"I don't need your protection! I can do this on my own." He sounded like a particularly stubborn child to Hermione, but this exchange had a much deeper meaning and she knew it. Harry had been right about Malfoy, and about Snape, all along. "I have a plan, it's just taking slightly longer than I thought."

"And you're alone! Pray, tell me, Draco, what is this brilliant plan of yours that is taking so long to achieve?"

"And let you swoop in at the last second and steal all the glory? No! This is my mission. He assigned it to me himself! And I'm not alone, I have others on my side. Just stay out of my business, OK?" Hermione flattened herself against the door as he strode past, too irritated to notice her.

Hermione's brain was whirring with logic, desperately trying to figure out what the conversation meant. The only conclusion she could draw right at that moment was that she was going to have to join Harry on his Malfoy watches, and suggest that they include Snape in future.


	9. Christmas I

**Ron's POV**

They had got to be kidding. First Harry, now Hermione too? Ron stood shaking his head in the kitchen. Half of his family were out picking up Christmas presents in Diagon Alley, but he, Harry, and Ginny had done their shopping in Hogsmeade before they'd come home. Hermione, at Ron's subtle request, had not been invited by Ron over this Christmas holiday once he'd found out that Cormac McLaggen had kissed her, but Molly had told him that he was being selfish and if he'd like to be left in the garden with the rest of the gnomes. Hermione was planning on staying only for two days just before they all headed back to Hogwarts together. Ron was just grateful she wasn't staying longer. The last thing he needed was to see her face and imagine McLaggen kissing it. He knew she was only doing it to spite him anyway. Just because he was so openly happy with Lavender.

"Look, I know you're still angry about Hermione and McLaggen, but I need you to just listen. You know as well as I do that Hermione's rational about this sort of thing and she's usually right-"

"Yeah, right about McLaggen, always right, she is-"

"And," Harry said, interrupting him and speaking a little louder, "she overheard the conversation too."

Ron turned to him and sighed. "Harry, you didn't just _happen_ to overhear the conversation, you were listening in because you already suspected him. You're twisting it to what you want it to sound like, but the truth is, it's likely nothing."

"It's not nothing, Ron, and you know it! The only reason you don't want to agree with me is because you don't want to agree with Hermione."

"Fine. So what if that's true? My point is still valid, if Dumbledore trusts Snape, then we should too. Look, I believe you, mate, I really do. But while Dumbledore and everyone else in the Order still trusts him, there's nothing we can do. I'm just telling you the other side of the argument."

Harry growled in frustration, but Ron knew that his mind was not going to be changed. At that moment, Fred flooed back in through the large brick fireplace in the cramped living room, and they knew that was going to be the end of the discussion, but to Ron's dismay, Harry's face showed that he hadn't given up trying just yet. He was going to carry on trying to convince people that Snape and Malfoy were Death Eaters, and it didn't matter what he said about it.

"-Not coming home, but we should still get him something. He's our son." Molly's voice sounded strained and tearful at the end of this conversation, and Ron knew immediately that they were talking about his absentee brother, Percy. He'd refused to come home for Christmas, and his mother was still crying about it nearly every night. As everyone dissipated quickly to their rooms, unwilling to face talking about their missing family member, Ron's face dropped and he turned his back to Harry.

He experienced a feeling of mourning with his family; Percy had chosen to leave the family, disown them, and slander them to the whole Ministry for the sake of his job. Ron loved his brother, but right now, he was hurting all of the rest of them selfishly, and he was livid at him. Ron had decided a few weeks ago that he didn't want to talk about Percy ever again. If Percy didn't want to be his brother, then he'd stop acting like a brother. Ron knew that was one of the reasons that his mum had been so insistent on inviting Hermione this Christmas; Molly didn't want to exclude anyone from their family gatherings given one member was already digging such a big hole in them.

Having had enough of the sad thoughts, he dragged Harry to the living room for a game of Wizard's Chess before dinner.

* * *

 **Ginny's POV**

It was only three days until Christmas, and Ginny sat in her tiny room on her own brushing her hair and humming to herself. This was one of the few times that she'd not had that irritating Fleur buzzing around, telling her how ugly she looked and insulting her room. It was bad enough she was staying in her house, but she was extra annoyed that Molly had placed her in her bedroom for the holidays, too. But she was currently out buying some more Christmas presents for her abnormally large family, so Ginny was enjoying the peace and quiet. She hopped lightly on the balls of her feet down the stairs to the living room, where Arthur, Ron, Bill, and Harry were sat having a deep discussion about the latest Quibbler article.

"But they obviously don't exist, it's like everything else in this magazine, absolute drivel." Bill was saying about the roughly drawn sketch of a creature on the front of the paper that looked as if it was done by Luna herself.

"I'm not so sure, I'm pretty certain Mcgonagall was talking about them once during a lesson, can't remember what she said though." Ron chimed in unhelpfully.

"Luna wouldn't make something like this up, but she really does believe in some ridiculous things. I'm not sure if she just pretends they exist because she likes the idea or if she genuinely believes they're real." Harry said, playing the middle-ground. He turned and smiled at her when he'd seen her enter, but carried on having their debate.

Ginny had been looking at Harry's face since she was ten years old, and only now was she really noticing it change. His jawline much more pronounced and just a hint of black stubble beginning to appear on his upper lip and chin. His cheekbones stood out more as well. He somehow looked so much wiser than he had last year. She knew that losing Sirius had been very hard on him, but it had also grown him in many ways.

In these moments when she looked at Harry, increasing in number just lately, Ginny forgot about Dean and really saw Harry again. Each time it felt like through new eyes. She'd felt bad at first for forgetting Dean, but also, she'd known their relationship wasn't going to be a lasting thing from the start. The only reason they'd gotten together in the first place was because she was told that Harry thought she was obsessive and clingy but was too polite to tell her so. She supposed they were right. But the foundation for her and Dean's relationship was mutual boredom; he liked her, but he'd been head over heels for Parvati for a long time.

She knew how Dean felt. Desperately trying to get over someone who'd never noticed him, they'd thrown themselves into this relationship. Ginny was fairly sure that at the inevitable end of their time together, they would be able to walk away as friends. And as for Harry… As much as Ginny hated herself for it, there was still that part of her, buried beneath the surface, which would jump for joy each time he looked at her. She would always be a little bit in love with him, and she'd grown to accept it.

Speaking of acceptance, Ginny was still keeping a close eye on Hermione, sending letters each and every day to check that she was alright, and Hermione seemed to be getting so much better. Hermione had been through so much, more than Ginny could really imagine, and she was finally coming out of the other side. She'd seemed a little out of control of her emotions as of late, but given that she'd had none for a while, they were bound to take some getting used to again, and Ginny knew this. She was so happy for her friend, and she had been carefully watching her own behaviour to ensure that Hermione would not ever feel so shut out by her again. Ginny's heart really was good, and she knew, slowly but surely, she was proving it.

* * *

 **Harry's POV**

A few days after Christmas and the uncomfortable presence of Percy and Scrimgeour, in the warm and lazy build up to the New Year, Harry sat on Ron's bed scanning through Advanced Potion Making, checking for the hundredth time he'd not missed any portion of the Prince's writing. This book had become an obsession of his, and he hung on the Prince's every word. After deciding for today that there was no more snippets of useful information, he placed the book carefully under his pillow, where it was kept, and looked out of the window to the snow-covered hills beyond.

Malfoy was out there somewhere right now, possibly plotting with Voldemort about the war to come and Dark magic and his plan… His plan. _What is it?_ He thought. _And where is he going every night that he can't tell Snape for fear of him intruding?_ He had so many questions, and now, hideously unexpectedly, many of them involved why he had saved Hermione's life a couple of months ago. Of all of Malfoy's behaviours, this made the least sense. And Hermione had written to him a few days ago telling him she had much more news and that they would have to find some time alone to talk about it whilst she was at the Burrow. It sounded urgent, and yet he still wondered whether Ron being included was part of her 'alone' suggestion or not. Their little group was so divided right now.

Not only that, with Ginny suddenly spending so much time with Hermione without giving a reason, Ron had been getting ever more suspicious, to the point where he'd started being cold to her because he thought she was 'on Hermione's side', much to Ginny's anger. Things were getting so complicated both inside his personal life and out in the world, and he was scarcely able to understand these conditions, let alone fight in them.

He sighed. He thought of Ginny, and not in the way he normally thought of her. She had been spending an awful lot of time with Hermione lately, and he knew she was doing it because Hermione was so down. No, despite what Hermione thought, he knew that she was depressed. He'd known ever since he'd started seeing her name appear at random locations the Marauders Map at all hours. He'd watched her in the mornings, too tired to speak to any of them, pale as a ghost, melting away, trying to hide the marks on her face that the tears had left, but unable to hide the emptiness in her eyes.

As much as he hated seeing it, every moment, he understood it. He'd felt this way when Sirius had died. He knew it was only reactive, and that Hermione's was ongoing and terrible, but on some level, he really did understand. Better than anyone else did, anyway. He had also known throughout this time watching her that there really was not much he could do that would pierce deep enough into her sunken consciousness to help her. He would stand by her without speaking, without doing anything. Silently reaching out. He'd stand by her every second, but he truly felt nothing he could do or say would help her.

When he'd seen her name up on the astronomy tower that night, he hadn't realised how serious it was. He was putting on his cloak to go to her, watching her name every second, when he'd seen 'Draco Malfoy' up there next to hers. He watched for five minutes, watched Dumbledore, Mcgonagall, and Snape's names moving quickly up to join them. He knew something was seriously wrong then. But with so many teachers around, how could he have gotten to her? Dumbledore, without a doubt, would have known. So he'd sat around and waited impatiently outside the hospital wing with Ron and Ginny.

He knew why Ginny had been spending so much time with Hermione, watching her carefully. Hermione had confided in her, he had guessed a while back. He supposed he ought to be hurt that she had chosen to talk to Ginny, and he was a little, but he was more relieved that she had just talked to someone. From his experience, his friends had been the only things to motivate him to keep going and support him despite what he'd been through. He knew she needed the same, he just had no idea how to do that.

Maybe he could try once she got here. Just something small, nothing off the scale. Something that wasn't like him would freak her out, and that wouldn't help either of them. He decided to just stick more deliberately on Hermione's side during this argument with Ron. He disagreed with how she'd acted, but she needed him now, much more than Ron did.

The view from the window was getting dimmer as the evening drew in. He decided to go downstairs and try out some of the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes he'd gotten for Christmas from Fred and George with Ginny. He watched her laugh as the fake wand turned to a rubber snake in his hand, her red hair rippling in her mirth. He liked her very much.

 _I'm in so much trouble_ , he thought to himself. And he smiled at her.


	10. Christmas II

**Hermione's POV**

Two days before she was intending to head back to Hogwarts, Hermione made the stop at the Burrow she had been both dreading and looking forward to all Christmas. She was grateful to see Harry and the Weasleys, but Ron had made it clear he didn't want her there, and it made her very uncomfortable. She had spent most of her holiday on her own though, her parents either working overtime at their dentist's practice – "you never know whose teeth that coin in the Christmas pudding will chip" – or shut up in their office working on their patients' lists. All in all, she was rather glad to finally not be on her own, despite Ron's currently unexplained foul mood towards her. After nearly six years of being friends with him, she was used to Ron's mood swings when it came to her, so she plainly ignored him.

She chatted and giggled with Ginny for most of the first day, whilst silently speculating on Harry's continued, suspiciously frequent, walks past Ginny's open bedroom door. Ginny was happier than she'd been all holiday, with Fleur being out shopping with Bill in Diagon Alley, she could at last let out her hatred of the girl to Hermione without anyone around to look at her as if to say 'don't'. Hermione hadn't really seen Fleur since the Triwizard Tournament, but on the basis of the information Ginny was providing, Hermione was sure Ginny couldn't be the only one of the Weasleys to feel this way about Fleur. Hermione joked to herself that the way Ginny felt about Fleur, or Phlegm as she preferred to call her behind the girl's back, was the same way that Ron felt about her right now, as Ron glared at her from across the room.

On the second day, however, it became a much smaller priority to pretend Hermione didn't exist as much as possible for Ron when the newspaper landed in the milk the morning before they returned to Hogwarts.

"Scourgify!" Molly quickly rescued the decrepit owl, cleaned the Prophet with her wand, untied the string around it and unfolded the paper. She gasped, throwing the newspaper down onto the table next to the scrambled eggs and jam stains, before leaning over it and reading aloud:

" _ **Macnair and Goyle Arrested**_

" _After two weeks of intense investigation, Walden Macnair and Fletcher Goyle have been formally arrested and are due to be charged with Death Eater affiliations and crimes against the public. The two were apprehended on Thursday the twelfth of December on their way into their respective workplaces at the Ministry of Magic and have been legally detained under suspicion of nefarious activity since._

" _As the writers of the Daily Prophet, along with many of its readers, believed, Macnair and Goyle have admitted to being important members of You-Know-Who's inner circle, and therefore can be assumed to have committed countless horrifying crimes of which the Department of Magical Law Enforcement are currently unaware of, along with the crimes they have already admitted responsibility for. The current charges which have been released to the press are as follows:_

" _Mr Macnair has admitted to two counts of wrongful theft of his neighbours, one count of threatening to use undue force upon his fellow magical citizens, five counts of threatening or otherwise harassing his fellow magical citizens, and one count of arson in his department offices which were originally believed to have been magical chicken-related._

" _Mr Goyle has admitted to two counts of false imprisonment of his wife, four counts of threatening or otherwise harassing his fellow citizens, and two counts of illegal obliviation of muggles in his home town in Bedfordshire."_

Molly stopped reading after this, clearly too frustrated to carry on.

"That's all they've caught them for? That's pathetic! The men are known Death Eaters, and the worst crimes they could pin on them are theft and harassment?" Bill cried out, his earring swinging. For once Molly was too preoccupied to notice.

Harry's face was nearly as red as the Weasleys' hair. "It's an outrage!"

"I know, Harry. But Death Eaters, however stupid, are very slippery. The Law Enforcement team are cunning and capable and they've dealt with Death Eaters since before any of you were even born. They know that sometimes it's best to just accept the charges they can catch them on and lock them away from innocent people rather than waste their own time chasing after rumours of worse crimes. They'll have time to investigate Macnair and Goyle a lot further once they're locked up safe in Azkaban." Arthur stated wisely.

"Yeah, but we all know that Azkaban's never going to last long anyway. The dementors joined You-Know-Who's side last time, so by now he'll be working on getting them as allies this time as well. The second he comes out into the open and declares a proper war, all the prisoners will be free as birds." Ron stared darkly at the bacon speared on his fork.

Even Fleur remained silent as the room full of people absorbed the truth in this black possibility that had ruined their morning. Behind her closed lips, Hermione's logical brain began stirring from its long, depression-induced sleep, whirring with both dread and determination.

* * *

 **Draco's POV**

Christmas break had been one of the longest periods of Draco's life, and one of the most miserable. In the week before Christmas, his manor had been almost completely empty, with only his mother reading books in her bedroom to distract herself from her husband being in Azkaban. He would occasionally see a house elf running around with plates of food to serve him or his mother, but other than that, the house was silent, empty, and cold. That was, of course, excluding the daily visits from his Aunt Bellatrix which were supposedly his Occlumency lessons. He had mastered Occlumency after the third lesson she had given him months ago, and she had since decided her time would be better spent trying to convince his mother to come out of her reclusive state.

Since Christmas Eve, though, his life had been painful, tormenting, and wretched. Unannounced on that particularly gloomy evening, the Dark Lord's servants had begun steadily pouring into the manor on his master's orders. Draco bitterly suspected that his aunt had offered up the mansion as a safe house for Death Eaters, since his father was no longer there to defend the house as theirs and his mother was so despondent. The manor, once peaceful, had become a hotel for the wizarding world's worst after only one evening. On Christmas Day, once all of the Death Eaters were settled into a guest room each, his Master finally appeared.

That evening, the whole household was called into the manor's boardroom on the second floor. He felt quietly irate that he was being summoned around his own house, but he arrived as punctually as he could. The terror outweighed the irritation by a huge amount. It didn't matter that he was beginning to feel about as sane as Loony Lovegood, he was still a Malfoy, and the retaining of his image was still a necessity. He felt his palms begin to sweat as he entered the room, and a chill travelled up his spine. The Dark Lord's presence gripped his throat like a vice, but he straightened his back and walked on, expressionless. He would have to be fearless for this meeting. He would undoubtedly be asked about his progress at Hogwarts, and having made none, he would have to think very carefully about how to answer his master.

Looking at his master's face, only for a minute and then bowing his head in respect, he took a seat in the middle of the long table, with the Dark Lord at its head. Tens of other Death Eaters settled around him, and the room was eerily quiet for the amount of people it contained. This was the Dark Lord's effect; utter fright instilled in anyone he met. Draco's mother was the last to enter, her face a mirror of his own in its impassiveness. A flick of his master's hand and the silence and alertness intensified.

"Before we begin our meeting, I would first deign to extend my courtesy to our hosts, the Malfoys, for entertaining us on such short notice. Especially since the head of the household is so unfortunately indisposed at present." The Dark Lord hissed. Draco remained completely passive to the subtle provocation.

Draco's mother inclined her head in response. "It's always an honour, my lord."

"Now…" Several faces around the room looked down at the polished black marble table top in front of them. A mistake, Draco knew, keeping his eyes on his master. The Dark Lord would single out those who were avoiding his eyes to draw attention to. "Greyback." The grizzled werewolf's animalistic grey eyes trained on the Dark Lord's narrowed red ones. "The werewolves. What is my current reception?"

Greyback spoke with a natural growl, as if the wolf part of him were only seconds away from exploding outwards. "The werewolves have been growing steadily angrier since the passing of the law on employment under Fudge. They're almost completely against the Ministry now. It's only a matter of time before they join us."

"Well done, Greyback." The Dark Lord shifted his gaze to the next Death Eater on his radar. "And you, Amycus?"

The squat, lumpy wizard stared at the table and stuttered "Y-yes, my lord?"

"Have you made any progress in securing a safe house? You know full well the Blacks' house is well protected by Order scum, and we cannot intrude on the Malfoys' hospitality for ever."

Draco's heart sank. He knew this meant the Death Eaters would be staying for at least a while longer, until they found a safe house of their own.

"No-no, my lord. B-but, we're looking into the house of the Urquart family. They've been dead for over ten years and no one's touched the house, so it's possible we might be able to use it!"

"Find out." There was a distinct coldness, more than usual, to the Dark Lord's voice, and he looked away from the disappointing man. Scanning the room, Draco felt a pang of dread, and he knew this was it. He concentrated his mind on slowing his heart rate, and calmly, subtly, protected his thoughts from his master. "Ah, Draco. Our young apprentice." Some of the Death Eaters laughed derisively. "Please explain to me the advancement you have made in the six months I have allowed you on your task."

Draco forced his voice to remain steady and empty of emotion. "My lord, I have tried several avenues of opportunity to complete the mission, some of which have made Dumbledore suspicious. For the last few months, since my first few attempts, I have focused on methods to transport the necessary Death Eaters into the school, and I am pleased to say I have made some clear headway."

The formality in his voice was alien to him, but the Dark Lord looked unreadable for a moment before nodding his head. "Very well. You will do well not to waste my time nor my kindness, Draco."

His message was clear; speed up this project or face the consequences. Draco knew all too well the severity of the costs should he fail. Draco almost sighed of relief when his role in the meeting was concluded, until the Dark Lord addressed him again.

"Draco." He felt himself stiffen, he was not prepared for this. The wall in his mind solidified even further. "It had occurred to me that whilst dear Severus may know Potter through teaching him, the depth of his evaluation may be stunted by authority in the school. I would be pleased if you could give me more insight into the boy's mind in order to grant us an advantage."

"Of course, my lord. Which information would be of most use?" He replied cautiously.

"The boy's personality, for example. So far we have only that he is stupidly brave and hot-tempered."

"That assessment is accurate, my lord. I'd also add that he's desperate to 'save' everyone, especially his idiot Gryffindor friends." His face twisted unnaturally into his trademark smirk, and a couple of the other Death Eaters around the table scoffed at the moron boy-who-lived.

"Interesting." A preoccupied look dawned on his master's face as he stroked Nagini, who had slithered into the room sometime during the rest of the conversation. "Who of his friends is the boy closest to?"

Draco's chest seemed to tighten at the question. If his master had any idea of what he had done, not once, but twice…

He looked for any signs of ridicule or anger in his master's face before he answered carefully. "If I'm not mistaken, the youngest Weasley boy, the Weasley girl, and the Granger mudblood all cling to him most of the time."

"Hm." The entire room fell silent for a few moments before the Dark Lord spoke again. "Thank you. That will be all."

It wasn't until their master had exited his chair, Nagini close at his heels, that the Death Eaters began quiet conversations and retired to their rooms. Draco's mother stayed in the room to inquire about tea or other refreshments for the guests, so he felt his obligated hospitality had ended with the meeting. He unobtrusively made his way to his bedroom and lay unmoving on the green silk sheets for an unknown time, staring at the ceiling.

Draco couldn't imagine how the Dark Lord would use Granger if possible to further his plans, but his blood pressure rose just thinking about his cruel master would react if he found out the truth about his connection to her life. He could only imagine the carnage that information would wreak on his family if the Death Eaters knew. He wondered briefly whether his life would be different if he had just watched her jump that night, but he quickly brushed the thought off. It didn't matter now. The night, as far as he was concerned, was a freak accident, dead and gone. He just thanked his lucky stars she didn't have any idea who her saviour was; in this instance, her ignorance really was his bliss.


	11. Reversed

Hermione had been stressed. Since everyone had returned to school after the Christmas Holidays, the realisation of the weight and closeness of the January exams seemed to hit everyone, but nobody more than Hermione. The school was so busy turning textbook pages and reciting passages to each other that even the announcement of the arrests of Death Eaters appeared to have been brushed under the carpet. Hermione had barely even had the chance to catch up with Harry about anything since they'd briefly spoken at the Burrow.

The exams slowly and stressfully proceeded to drain the students' motivation and energy over the week, so that when Friday afternoon came, it looked like the entire student body had been eating Weasleys' Wildfire Whiz-Bangs as they bounced out of the Great Hall. Despite the damp, overcast weather, Hermione and the rest of the Gryffindors were relieved to be able to unwind slightly more.

"Of course, we have to start preparing for the summer exams now if we want to do well…" Hermione had started to say several times, and each time she had been shut down and told to relax for once. Once the appropriate sighing and throwing themselves into armchairs in the Gryffindor common room along with the other sixth years was complete, Harry invited Hermione for a walk in the grounds. She knew they had a lot to talk about. Plus, Ron and Lavender had just returned from the last exam hand in hand, and Hermione decided she'd rather not stick around for their after exam not-a-conversation routine that she had witnessed several times over the last week.

Covering herself in a waterproof cloak, she followed Harry out of the castle into the blustery, freezing cold grounds. Hermione pulled her red and gold Gryffindor scarf closer around her face.

"So I wanted to tell you at the Burrow, but I didn't really get the chance with you and Ron avoiding each other." Harry looked at her sideways. "Do you think you might both be behaving a little bit immature? Maybe you could both just–"

"No, Harry." Hermione looked him dead in the eye. "What did you want to tell me?"

"Well, on Christmas Day, Scrimgeour and Percy paid us a visit at the Burrow."

"The Minister of Magic? Wow! What did he want?"

"He wanted to test my loyalty to Dumbledore. He asked me if I would be willing to be the poster boy for the Daily Prophet, smile and nod and tell people the Ministry can handle the Death Eaters."

"You're kidding! After everything they printed about you last year." Hermione screwed up her face in disgust at the Minister's shameless attitude towards him.

"I know! Of course, I said no. Then he started on Dumbledore…" Harry explained the full conversation he'd had at this point, and for around half an hour, the two cheerfully insulted the Minister. When the abuse of the Minister and the Daily Prophet naturally came to an end, Hermione realised they had reached the edge of the lake. Without asking, the two began to walk around it silently. The surface of the Black Lake rippled in the breeze, and the freezing air met their red cheeks bitterly.

"I have some news as well, actually. Obviously, Goyle's father was taken in for questioning before he was arrested. I read the newspaper article out to you, remember? Well, after that, I guess Goyle wasn't very happy. He attacked me from behind, blindfolded me and left me in the Forbidden Forest."

"He did _what_?" Harry's anger burst from his chest unexpectedly. "Why didn't you tell me? That seems like pretty important information to tell your best friends, Hermione!"

"I know, I know, but I didn't really get the chance!"

"This is more important than some stupid fight with Ron!"

"But I'm fine now, aren't I?"

"Hermione, you-"

She rounded on him, placing her hands on his shoulders and stopping him from walking. "Harry, I _know_. No more life-threatening secrets, I promise."

He took a deep breath and pursed his lips, assessing her face. "Fine."

"Anyway, it wasn't that I was kidnapped that I wanted to tell you."

"Really?"

"Really. It's that I was sat in the forest for a few hours, and even after the Petrificus Totalus charm wore off I couldn't get free. And… Malfoy came along and let me go!" Harry's facial expression told her he couldn't manage another emphatic outcry, so Hermione carried on with an explanation anyway. "It was for selfish reasons, obviously. He said that if I died out there, he and the rest of the Slytherins would get the blame for it, so he was protecting his friends by letting me go."

Harry seemed lost for words. Hermione understood exactly how confused he was by Malfoy's recent behaviour. She herself could not understand it. She was simply frustrated by him.

"He's trying something. He's up to something, he must be." Harry stated, shaking his head.

"Yes, but what? What could he possibly be up to that involves saving my life once and freeing me from the Forest another time?" The strands of Hermione's hair that had come loose from the twist at the back of her neck whipped around her cheeks as she spoke.

"I've no idea. I think we should start watching him a lot more closely."

"I agree. That's still not all though."

"How much has happened to you in the last three weeks that everyone else has been oblivious to?" Harry asked incredulously. They had managed to walk a little way around the lake now.

"It's not as serious as the other thing. I'm not sure I could take many more serious incidents." Hermione chuckled ruefully.

"Go on then."

Hermione paused before her next sentence. "I slapped Cormac McLaggen."

Harry looked at her for a couple of seconds before bursting with laughter. Hermione giggled along with his hysterics.

"You… ha ha… you slapped Cormac McLaggen?" Hermione nodded, grinning. "I suppose I don't have to ask why?"

"He was a pig the entire duration of the party, and then he kissed me without my permission!"

"Ah ha ha, what did his face look like?" Harry's face was wrinkled with mirth.

"Very shocked. I was pretty shocked too, he stepped back and he was grinning at me, and I just saw red."

Harry chuckled. "Ron's going to love this."

"No! Well, I suppose… it'll get out anyway, won't it?" Hermione's shoulders slumped.

"You know Hogwarts. If you've got any deep dark secrets, everyone will know about it. But I wouldn't be too upset about that, I'm positive most people feel the same way about McLaggen as you do." Hermione laughed sheepishly. "Besides, I'm not sure Ron will be that unbearable about it, Ron has… what was it you said? Ron has the emotional range of a teaspoon." Hermione and Harry both laughed uncontrollably. By this time, the two had made the journey almost to the Quidditch pitch and had sunken themselves into being unable to control fits of hilarity even when just glancing sideways at each other.

"To be fair to our dear Ronald, I'm not sure I've ever seen him display more emotion that when we used the time turner in third year. He was so shocked I think his eyebrows got tangled in his hair!"

* * *

Nearing the Quidditch pitch, Hermione suddenly felt the familiar, odd sensation of being stared at. Looking around for the source of the discomfort, she saw what she and Harry had missed before: three figures in emerald green Quidditch gear flying around the pitch in the receding evening light. One, the unmistakable platinum blonde, had looked down at her, having obviously heard their rowdiness from quite a distance away.

Only two beats after Hermione had met the eyes of the cause of her uneasiness, happening almost too fast for Hermione to register, one of the other Slytherins slammed hard into Malfoy's side, throwing him harshly off of his broomstick with his immense weight. Hermione's brain slowed to a crawl. And her heart stopped.

Malfoy's hand reached for his broomstick as his body was flung off into open space, but closed uselessly on empty air. His limbs flailed desperately for a moment as he realised he was seventy feet from the ground. Even from that distance, Hermione could see the pure panic settle into his sharp face. Without really deciding, without even thinking, Hermione's fingers closed on her wand as she watched him pass halfway to the solid ground below. It was all too clear what was about to happen if she did nothing in the next half second.

Her ears felt muffled, but she distinctly heard herself almost tripping over her own words. "Arresto momentum!"

Not a millisecond too late, Malfoy's floundering body paused a foot from the floor, before dropping the last expanse to fall heavily on his left arm. Immediately, her senses returned to her, with Harry shaking her arm and pulling her towards the scene of the accident.

Malfoy lay on the ground cradling his arm, but making no noise, which Hermione knew Harry considered yet another testament to his strange behaviour this year. Just before Hermione and Harry had walked across the grass to him, keeping a safe distance in case he lashed out, Crabbe and Goyle landed next to him, begging for his forgiveness. Zabini, whom Hermione had not seen sitting in the stands, firmly told the two of them to go back inside and stop making pricks of themselves, before leaning down and murmuring something inaudible to the pained blonde boy. Malfoy grumbled something back, and then seemed to realise that Harry and Hermione were stood only a few metres away.

"What?" Malfoy growled at them, glaring from his spot on the field.

"Nothing… you stay on your broom even less often when practicing than when playing, Malfoy. That's interesting. I didn't think you could get much worse." Hermione slapped his arm, and he turned towards her. "What?"

"The guy's just fallen almost a hundred feet and your first thought is to take the mick out of him?"

Harry pursed his lips and had the decency to look a little ashamed.

"I don't need a mudblood's help fighting my battles, Granger."

Hermione turned on him indignantly. "I wasn't doing it for you."

"Oh, I forgot, Potter needs his friends to keep his morals in check. Nothing like having independent thought, eh, Zabini?" He and Zabini snickered. Hermione felt her anger rise and her eyes narrow, but she was much more calm and collected than Harry. She wouldn't make any rash decisions.

"Oh please, none of your thoughts are original. ' _My father's going to hear about this'_ has become your catchphrase, ferret." Harry fired back at him.

Malfoy's face flushed with anger. He grabbed Zabini's extended arm and hauled himself off the floor to look Harry in the eyes. Hermione positioned herself very slightly in front of Harry, ready to bodily force them apart should they decide to have an all-out brawl on the Quidditch pitch.

"That's enough, Harry, it's not worth it!"

"Listen to your mudblood, Potter! She's the only one of you idiots with at least a few brain cells."

"Oh, piss off, Malfoy!" Harry stepped closer again, and Hermione leaned back to prevent him getting any closer to the provoking blonde Slytherin. Zabini stood off to the side, amusing himself with the sight of the dispute. "She might be muggleborn, but her family aren't the ones locked up in Azkaban, are they?" Harry spat.

Hermione finally gave up on preventing the fight as Malfoy launched himself forward at Harry. She moved out of the way of the two boys and quickly shouted "Protego!" Both infuriated males bounced back off of the force field and glared icily at Hermione. "That is _enough_! Harry, go back to the castle." Harry's livid face immediately told her he was going to argue. "Now!"

Harry turned on his heels and stormed off of the grass, fists clenched and red-faced. Hermione trained her eyes back on Malfoy. He did nothing but glower coldly at her for a few moments, and she stared defiantly back, refusing to give in to his spoiled, aggressive, and prejudiced attitude. The silent stand-off seemed to last infinitely longer than it really did, and Zabini still watched fascinatedly at the unfolding scene.

Malfoy was the first to break the mute deadlock. "If you're expecting a thank you, you'd better remember who you're talking to." He reminded her venomously.

"I'm not expecting a thank you." Hermione scoffed, rolling her eyes at his ridiculous assumption. She smiled very slightly, and quietly leaned in. "Now we're even." And without another word she turned her back on his astonished face, and walked calmly back towards the castle.


	12. Chemistry

The day of the last examination was shaping up to be exactly as dull and cold as January promised, but as the evening drew in, Draco couldn't sit inside any longer. Telling Crabbe and Goyle he needed to practice some new Quidditch moves with them as Beaters, he changed into his Quidditch gear and headed towards the pitch with Goyle, Crabbe, and a bored Zabini in tow.

The light faded behind a mask of grey clouds as the three Quidditch players knocked the Quaffle around and Zabini sat watching in the stands, laughing at their mistakes and casting tiny flames with his wand for entertainment. After the miserable Christmas break he'd had and the current failure of his cabinet fixing endeavours, he felt as though he must have aged at least five years. He thought he deserved just the one night of slacking off and remembering what it felt like to be young. So much had happened to him recently.

Draco figured that he probably had around an hour left before it would become simply too cold to play; the heat inside his gloves was already being sucked out onto the freezing handle of his broomstick. As his last activity of the night, he decided to release the Snitch to chase around for a few minutes, while Crabbe and Goyle tossed the Quaffle around between them, missing frequently. The tiny golden ball with wings flew high into the air, and Draco's eyes followed it keenly, chasing close behind it on his broomstick. He had never matched Scarhead for catching the Snitch, but he wasn't bad in the slightest. His father refused to believe that throughout his time at Hogwarts though, and this is one of the motivators that had forced him to do well. He supposed the same was true of his academic studies with Granger. The fact that she'd always been an annoying stuck up know-it-all had required him to do better, because he couldn't be doing worse than someone like her.

As he followed the Snitch higher, he realised this is why her arguing with him in the Forbidden Forest had annoyed him so much. Because her squeaky-clean reputation had always outranked his own despite her filthy muggle blood. And on top of that, she had the audacity to rub his face in it, regardless of her being depressed. It enraged him, the nerve of her! He could hear her mocking laughter now. He stretched his arm forwards, using his own anger to push him further.

Granger's laughter echoed around the stands and made its way through the air to where Draco was flying, seventy feet up, chasing the Snitch. On reflex, he looked down to find the source of the sound. That really was her! The surprise of her sudden appearance distracted him momentarily from his fury. He felt he might be psychic. _Well, think of the devil and the devil shall appear_ , he thought smugly to himself.

 _Wham!_

Crabbe's huge body mass crashed against Draco's left side, throwing him off his broomstick and into the air. Draco's brain automatically went into panic mode, and when he reached for the broomstick handle and missed, his limbs began flailing frantically to find something to grip. He found nothing. He was free falling. He was going to die.

"Arresto momentum!"

Suddenly, he halted in mid-air. He barely had time to recognise that his body had not hit the floor and broken before he fell the final foot and landed with a thud directly on his left arm. He sat up, lost in shock for a few moments, unable to ignore the sharp, burning pain in his arm that left him white as a sheet. He was positive he must have broken it. Another trip to the hospital wing looked to be on the horizon.

Crabbe and Goyle thumped down next to him, grovelling and looking as though they might try and fix it with their wands themselves. Zabini thankfully stepped in before they had the chance to.

"Get back to the castle now and stop making pricks of yourselves." Zabini's tone, perpetually lazy and haughty, actually held some annoyance for once. He leaned down and murmured towards Draco's ear, afraid of being caught showing concern, "you alright, mate?"

"Landed on my bloody arm. I'm going to see Madam Pomfrey." Draco spoke with his teeth clenched. Finally, he looked up and saw the current bane of his life wandering closer over the grass, accompanied by his least favourite scarred celebrity. Granger and Potter. Brilliant.

He realised Granger must have been the one to cast the charm, as Scarhead definitely wasn't bright enough to think on the spot like that. He supposed he should have been grateful, but the pain he was experiencing was making him nothing but resentful that they were both there to observe his accident. They stared at him questioningly.

"What?" Draco's pain level and the remnants of fear he still felt did not put him in the mood to welcome Potter warmly.

"Nothing… you stay on your broom even less often when practicing than when playing, Malfoy. That's interesting. I didn't think you could get much worse." Granger hit his arm and glared at him pointedly. "What?" He asked dumbly.

"The guy's just fallen almost a hundred feet and your first thought is to take the mick out of him?" Granger's voice became high-pitched and bossy, and somehow this rubbed Draco up the wrong way. Zabini stood about a metre away from the sight, trying to suppress a chuckle, which earned him a stare from Draco. _Why isn't he helping?_ Zabini shrugged at the look, stubbornly remaining where he was.

"I don't need a mudblood's help fighting my battles, Granger." He looked her up and down derisively.

"I wasn't doing it for you." Granger's eyebrows pulled together in vexation.

"Oh, I forgot, Potter needs his friends to keep his morals in check. Nothing like having independent thought, eh, Zabini?" He smirked at the two outraged Gryffindors, and Zabini laughed loudly.

"Oh please, none of your thoughts are original. ' _My father's going to hear about this'_ has become your catchphrase, ferret." Draco grabbed Zabini's outstretched arm and pulled himself to his feet, moving forward slightly, and ignoring the pain in his arm. He felt as though he may just forget about wands and clock Pothead himself if he didn't shut his mouth within the next half-minute.

"That's enough, Harry, it's not worth it!" He noticed she'd put herself between him and the egotistical prick-who-lived, and he almost laughed out loud. The stuck up know-it-all was just over five feet tall and small built, at that. The thought that she genuinely believed she could physically split up two six-foot-plus Quidditch players was hysterical.

"Listen to your mudblood, Potter! She's the only one of you idiots with at least a few brain cells." He thoroughly enjoyed watching Potter's nostrils flare.

"Oh, piss off, Malfoy! She might be muggleborn, but her family aren't the ones locked up in Azkaban, are they?" Potter spat at him. Draco felt his face flush red. _How dare he?_ He was thought about reminding Scarhead that his father wasn't dead, hurling himself forwards ready to punch the bloody idiot's lights out, but the mudblood responded first.

"Protego! That is _enough_!" Granger had smartly placed herself on the other side of the force field, or Draco might have chucked a jinx at her in that moment. "Harry, go back to the castle. Now!" Draco smirked as Potter obediently marched back towards the Entrance Hall, muttering curses to himself.

He turned his cold look back to the face of the mudblood who had caused him so much trouble this year. _Why? Why in the name of Merlin's saggy left had his body, without his brain's permission, decided to save this infuriating girl from jumping out of that window? Where was the logic?_ She stared defiantly back at him, refusing to break her insolent brown eyes away from his icy grey ones. They were stuck in a furious impasse.

Draco finally broke the silence. "If you're expecting a thank you, you'd better remember who you're talking to." He spat, looking down at her.

"I'm not expecting a thank you." Granger sneered and rolled her eyes. Then she did something odd. One corner of her mouth lifted, and he suddenly had the feel of being a mouse that had walked into the mouth of a cat. Gently leaning in, she spoke in a low voice. "Now we're even."

Draco's eyes widened as she sauntered back towards the castle. _She knows_. _How could she possibly know?_ _How long has she known?_

He stood there staring at her retreating back for long after it had disappeared.

"What was that about?" Zabini says quietly. His question was quite serious, and Draco knew that Zabini could tell he'd been keeping secrets from him for a while now, and not necessarily secrets about his Death Eater involvement, either. Draco sighed loudly and sat down in the stands, mentally debating whether or not to just tell Zabini what he'd been keeping from everyone. On the one hand, another person in the know was another one who could potentially tell the Dark Lord and lead him to be killed. But on the other hand, he knew Zabini would take this secret to his grave, and Draco's mind was already so overburdened. Zabini sat down next to him, and Draco's mind was finally made up. He needed to share some of this with somebody.

"You remember when Granger was in the hospital wing a few weeks back?"

"Yeah…" Zabini's voice was sceptical.

"When you were telling me, I already knew. And I already knew why."

"Right. And you kept it to yourself… to add suspense to an already weird conversation?"

"No. I didn't tell you because what happened to her has the potential to be very _unfortunate_ for myself and my family." Draco's tone had undertones of importance, and Zabini, the Slytherin he was, understood immediately.

"It will go no further than me." He swore.

Draco took a deep breath. "I was up on the seventh floor that night, and I heard somebody running. I hid, and Granger ran past me and up to the astronomy tower, and I followed her. She was crying, and I thought it would be entertaining to find out why the posh and pristine boy-who-lived's best friend was out of bed after hours. And… she tried to jump out of the astronomy tower window."

"She _what_?" Zabini rarely lost composure, but this had genuinely surprised him enough to drop his cool demeanour, just for a second.

"Yeah. And for some messed up reason, Merlin knows why, I should've just kept to myself, it's caused me so many problems, stupid mudblood… I stopped her."

Zabini looked lost for words. "I… but, how… _Why_?"

"I don't know!" Draco's anger finally burst inside him. "I don't know, okay? I've been trying to figure it out for weeks and weeks, but I don't know. Something about her just seemed broken. Or some stupid emotional rubbish like that. I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't choose to do it. I just did. I wish I'd never followed her."

There was a moment's silence. "But… then you went to the Forbidden Forest to get her as well." Zabini's tone wasn't accusing, but it was like he was deliberately poking around with Draco's emotional state to get some answers.

"Goyle told you."

"No. Goyle told Nott who told me."

Draco growled in irritation. "Yeah, I saved her again. I know why I did that time, though. Slytherins are under enough suspicion as it is, we don't need the Gryffindor Princess disappearing under Dumbledore's nose with a war about to unfold. We would all have been blamed."

Zabini thought. "Okay, fair enough." And then, strangely, he laughed. "You know, for the Gryffindor Princess, best friend of the boy-who-lived, brains of the Golden Trio and all that, she's a bit of a damsel in distress." Despite himself, Draco laughed at that.

"Especially for a mudblood who insists on being so indignantly tough." Draco said bitterly. The two chuckled together.

Night had really drawn in at that point, and Draco looked up at the inky black sky, watching the glittering specks of light. Zabini sighed, and smiled slightly. "So now she knows."

"What?"

"That you were the one who saved her."

"I guess so." Draco's face hardened.

"She won't tell anybody."

Draco looked at him. "You don't know that."

"Yeah I do. C'mon, don't be so stupid, you've known those bloody idiots for six years. She's not going to tell anyone because she doesn't understand why you did it. Granger sees absolutely everything like a puzzle, and if she's not the first person to complete it… well, you know Granger. Has to be the best at everything. She wants to figure it out before anyone else."

"Well, if she could let me know when she does, that'd be bloody fantastic. As I don't even know."

"I do." Zabini smirked. Did he have to be so infuriatingly vague? Right now?

"Go on then."

"Granger and you… you have chemistry." Draco felt like his entire brain had to stop and reprocess this.

"Excuse me?" He spat.

"Chemistry." Draco had held back a few punches, not least earlier that evening with Potter, but he'd never found it so difficult not to hit his friend in his life. "The competition, mental and academic. You thrive off it, both of you. You're intellectually well matched and on opposite sides of the war. You're complete opposites. So there's chemistry."

"Hell itself will freeze over before I am ever attracted to _mudblood Granger_." He controlled his voice, ensuring just the right amount of derision and disgust.

"Ah." Zabini stood, and started walking back towards the castle, before turning around and walking backwards to face Draco again, smirking. "I never said there was attraction. I said there's chemistry."

After Zabini vanished into the castle, Draco could not reign in his anger enough to go inside and to the hospital wing for another hour.


	13. Silence

Ron was getting to the end of his tether.

Granted, it didn't take a lot for Ron's tether to run short, particularly recently, but this was different. This was like a tiny needle prodding non-stop for months. Eventually, he was going to turn around and snap. Everywhere he turned, Lavender was there, hugging him, calling him sickeningly sweet nicknames, pulling him into secluded rooms to kiss him. His patience was wearing thin. Even worse, the more distant he made himself from her, the more jealous she got, accusing him of being with other people. It didn't matter to Lavender that Parvati was just returning a quill he had left behind in Potions; because he had gone to his first lesson after breakfast without first giving her a kiss, he was obviously cheating on her.

So when she popped up out of nowhere that first afternoon back from the Christmas holidays, giving him a huge squeeze and calling "Won-Won" in a squeaky voice the second he'd stepped out of Charms, he inevitably ended up pushing her off, red faced and looking around bashfully at his classmates. Nobody, not even Hermione, reacted to Lavender's elaborate public displays of affection any more. But Lavender's face dropped, and for a moment, Ron felt bad. As much as she irritated him, he didn't like to see her upset. As her quivering lip became a sulky pout, however, Ron's demeanour became defensive. He wouldn't push her away if she just wouldn't be so clingy and loud.

"We'll talk about this later," Ron said, and began walking quickly in the other direction after seeing the look on her face, knowing she was about to start another argument. He'd had enough of her causing scenes in public places. Lavender was quite the exhibitionist when it came to drama, but he'd much prefer to keep it private and not humiliate himself in front of his friends and classmates. He marched around the second floor, far too crimson-faced and flustered to return to the common room just yet, where he knew he'd be facing an angry, squeaky girlfriend anyway. He decided he'd much rather get sore feet than sore ears.

He was becoming increasingly confused, and had been getting more and more disillusioned with his relationship with Lavender since Christmas. That awful, embarrassing gift she'd given him – the gold necklace reading "my sweetheart" – had done nothing to increase his affections for her, and it was becoming very obvious that she knew nothing about him despite months of dating him. He was sure she didn't really care who her boyfriend was as long as she had one.

As he trailed around yet another corner of the castle, thinking solely about what to do about his failing love life, he almost didn't notice when he ran headlong into a certain dirty-blonde Ravenclaw.

"Luna! I'm sorry." He pulled her to her feet and helped collect up her scrolls again.

"That's alright, Ron. Deep thoughts can sometimes do that to us." She bored her unflinching blue eyes into his. "Although I'm getting the impression you probably don't want to talk about it. I can see the conflict..." She sort of part-smiled and pointed at his eyebrows, half pulled together. Ron was, as he so often was, caught by surprise at Luna's observance. "Well, see you." She said gently, and then floated away towards another corridor.

Ron hesitated. "Luna, wait!" Luna turned softly. "What if… I did want to talk about it?"

"Then I'd suggest you talk to a friend. Someone you trust."

"You _are_ my friend, Luna." He was hoping she was getting the hint, though it was always hard to tell with the dreamy girl.

"Oh, OK." She drifted back towards him. "Was it about Harry's obsession with Draco Malfoy's strange attitude?"

"Um… no." She thought so too? So Harry wasn't the only one. Not that he didn't trust Harry, but he'd been proven to take peoples' behaviours out of context before, and it often hurt their cause more than helped it. Snape was the biggest example of this. Ron was getting carried away. "Actually, it's about Lavender. Well, me and Lavender, and our, um…"

"Relationship?" Luna's face didn't change from the faraway smile she always had.

"Right, um, yes, exactly. The thing is… is that, I don't really… I don't really want…"

"To be in a relationship with her anymore, and you're afraid of how she'll take it if you manage to work up the courage to break up with her?"

Ron nodded fervently, grateful he hadn't actually had to say the words himself.

Luna, more contemplative than usual, took her time to respond. "Well, my advice is that nobody wants to be led on when one person isn't wholeheartedly in a relationship anymore. And if you leave it too long, it's more likely she'll ask you why you let her believe you wanted her for longer than you did. I think if you don't want to be in a relationship with her, it's kinder to her to tell her now, and face the consequences."

Ron thought on this for a moment. She was probably right. On the bright side, he might miss his toes, but at least Lavender wouldn't harass him anymore. _And_ , said a quiet part at the back of his mind, _Hermione might talk to you again_. He turned to thank Luna, but she'd already wandered off down the stairs at the end of the corridor.

* * *

He spent the rest of the day avoiding Lavender, wanting to think over exactly what he needed to say to her before he saw her again. Most difficult was Potions, when she sat two desks behind him and Harry and spent the entire lesson glaring unblinkingly at his back. He felt as though she was going to burn holes through his shirt. When Slughorn allowed them to leave a few minutes early, Harry having topped the class as usual, the prick, Ron filed as quickly as possible out of the classroom and up to the Gryffindor tower before Lavender could get a hold on him. Reaching the dormitories, the only place Ron was really safe from Lavender, he occupied himself with pointlessly rearranging his clothes whilst waiting for something to come along and distract him.

"You need to stop avoiding Lavender, mate, she just comes to pester me instead, it's driving me mental." Ron turned to see Harry making his way across the room to leave his bag on his bed and start getting ready for dinner. He looked a little peevish, and Ron guessed that having missed Ron, Lavender had clung to Harry for support instead.

"Sorry." There was comfortable silence for a moment, before Ron looked hesitantly at Harry. "I, er, talked to Luna today."

"You did? I thought you thought everything she said was complete nonsense." Harry looked quizzically at him, still leaning over the trunk at the end of his bed.

"Well, yeah, I did, but… She's grown on me, you know? I think maybe the reason everyone thinks she's just crazy is because she sees things that other people don't."

"Yeah, like Nargles and Gulping Plimpies, you mean?" Harry smirked, and Ron chuckled in response.

"Yeah, fair enough. But I mean she's much more perceptive than anyone really gives her credit for. Just 'cause she's a bit odd, everyone has to make fun of her. It's not fair, I don't think." Ron finished his sentence with much more fervour than he'd intended.

"No, it's not, but didn't this conversation have a point to begin with?"

"Right, yeah, sorry. I talked to her about… well, me and Lavender."

"What about you and Lavender?" Harry continued stripping off his jumper.

"I've been feeling a bit, you know… like I don't want to be with her anymore." Ron almost flushed. He was embarrassed to have to start any sentence spoken to another boy with 'I've been feeling', but Harry seemed to not have noticed his awkwardness.

"Well, break up with her then."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what Luna said too."

"Then what's the problem?"

"What's the problem? Have you met Lavender?" Ron gulped, and Harry finally walked over and sat on the end of Ron's bed with him.

"It's going to be fine."

"She's going to murder me."

"She won't kill you, mate. She'd be expelled." Harry smiled at him, and Ron gave a weak smile back. Ron appreciated this. Harry, for all of his positive points, was never good at the emotional support side of things.

* * *

On the last day of exams, Ron was losing feeling in his hand. The second Lavender had gotten hold of him on Tuesday morning, she'd refused to let go unless absolutely necessary, like during the exams themselves. But she'd come running straight over the minute the professors told them to put down their quills, and would not let him loose again until it was time to go to bed. But by the last day, Ron's patience was running thin again, and in a desperate attempt to get away from her, told her he was going to the library to finish some homework he knew she'd already done.

"I'll come and help you, Won-Won!"

"No!" He said a little too quickly. "No, I work better on my own." He was a little gentler this time. He swiftly shook her off and walked automatically to the library. Having reached the library, however, he realised he really didn't want to do this homework the night of finishing his last exam. He turned on his heels and spun towards the direction of the Black Lake, intending to just simply enjoy his time away from his girlfriend, and possibly think things over further.

He must have sat outside for no more than half an hour, breathing in the cool air in the darkening sky and listening to the sound of the lake rippling, before he got bored. He outright refused to go back up to Lavender (and an irate Hermione) just yet, and so he walked around the castle until he was directly underneath the Gryffindor dormitory windows.

"Accio broomstick!" His wand emitted a white pulse and he felt the rush of air as his broomstick obediently jumped into his hand. He'd have asked Harry to join him, but Harry was so preoccupied with Hermione these days, he was beginning to wonder whose side he was on. And Ginny was no help either. And Lavender felt more like a punishment than a reward for his growing maturity – having a relationship and making decisions for himself and all. He was just exploring new options, and what was wrong with that? Although, he wasn't keen on _her_ choice of options. Cormac Bloody McLaggen. Tosser.

"Won-Won! Ron, are you out here?" Lavender's shrill voice called over the tranquil grounds.

Oh, no. Ron quickly and silently launched himself towards the Quidditch pitch, totally forgetting the broomstick in his right hand, and hiding himself under the stands, where she couldn't see him tucked away in the shadows.

He watched her search the area he'd been sat at earlier, and then briefly glance across the lake, before carrying on her search. She'd totally ignored the Quidditch pitch altogether! She really didn't know him at all. Not that he was ungrateful for her not being able to find him right at that moment. He breathed in the cold air, gathering oxygen after his sprint towards the stands.

"…Are under enough suspicion as it is, we don't need the Gryffindor Princess disappearing under Dumbledore's nose with a war about to unfold. We would all have been blamed." Ron turned his pink face upwards to see none other than Malfoy and Zabini sat in the stands above where he'd hidden himself. Their voices were a little muffled, but he could still hear every word.

"Okay, fair enough. You know, for the Gryffindor Princess, best friend of the boy-who-lived, brains of the Golden Trio and all that, she's a bit of a damsel in distress." Were they talking about Hermione? He could feel his ears automatically going red as he assumed what they had been saying before he'd noticed they were there. Malfoy laughed in response.

"Especially for a mudblood who insists on being so indignantly tough." Ron's eyebrows pulled together, but he didn't want to announce himself just yet. He wanted to keep listening until they'd said something really incriminating. Maybe he'd be able to go back to Harry with something worth sharing about Malfoy being a Death Eater. Maybe he'd find out Harry was right all along and actually have proof. There was silence for a moment before Zabini spoke again.

"So now she knows."

"What?" Malfoy's words reflected Ron's thoughts.

"That you were the one who saved her." Were they still talking about Hermione?

"I guess so." Saved who from what? Ron wished they'd stop being so vague, although they didn't know someone was listening, and if they did, they wouldn't be saying anything anyway.

"She won't tell anybody."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah I do. C'mon, don't be so stupid, you've known those bloody idiots for six years. She's not going to tell anyone because she doesn't understand why you did it. Granger sees absolutely everything like a puzzle, and if she's not the first person to complete it… well, you know Granger. Has to be the best at everything. She wants to figure it out before anyone else." So they were talking about Hermione… _Saved_ her? What?

"Well, if she could let me know when she does, that'd be bloody fantastic. As I don't even know."

"I do." There was a beat of quiet, in which Ron imagined Malfoy was looking at Zabini in the confused way that Ron's face had been stuck in since the beginning of the conversation.

"Go on then."

"Granger and you… you have chemistry."

Silence. Ron's brain seemed unable to rearrange itself into an appropriate expression.

What? _What?_

"Excuse me?" Malfoy's voice turned somewhat dangerous, daring Zabini to continue on this train of thought.

"Chemistry. The competition, mental and academic. You thrive off it, both of you. You're intellectually well matched and on opposite sides of the war. You're complete opposites. So there's chemistry."

 _ **What?**_

"Hell itself will freeze over before I am ever attracted to _mudblood Granger_." Despite his mental incredulousness, Ron's ears began to colour again as he processed the insult towards his friend. As if she'd ever be attracted to a worthless ball of slime like him either, he thought.

"Ah." Ron heard the stands creaking as Zabini stood to walk away, and hid himself further in the shadows. "I never said there was attraction. I said there's chemistry."

Before Ron could think about anything else or work out the disgusting riddle that had just dripped out of Zabini's mouth, he scurried, as quietly as he could manage, out from behind the stands and around the castle. He may have been worried about Malfoy hearing him, if he hadn't known Malfoy himself had been too astonished to notice.

This was something he _had_ to talk to Harry about.


	14. Better

"Harry! _Harry!_ Wake up." Ron shook Harry's arm and put his glasses in his hand.

"Wha- what?" Harry's blurry gaze fixed on the shocking red of Ron's hair in the moonlight, a breeze drifting in from the opposite side of the room.

"I need to talk to you."

Harry's eyebrows pulled together and he grabbed his watch from the nightstand. "And it couldn't wait until breakfast?" Harry grumbled groggily.

"I think I know who saved Hermione from falling out the window in November when she was sleepwalking!" Ron's face was urgent. He'd been thinking about this all night, and he needed some form of confirmation from his friend. He'd been so confused by Malfoy and Zabini's conversation yesterday, surely he and Harry could piece together something if they put their heads together.

"What are you talking about?" Harry snapped to attention.

"Hermione, when she sleepwalked out of a window, remember?"

"Well, yeah…"

"I overheard a conversation between the snakes today, Malfoy and Zabini. Malfoy said that he'd 'saved' Hermione or something, and I've been thinking… it has to be when she fell off the astronomy tower!"

"What makes you think that?" Harry said cagily.

"Come on, Harry, when has Hermione ever needed saving when we weren't there for her? There's only one time, and that's when she was wondering around the castle in the middle of the night like a bloody idiot!"

"What does that mean?"

"Keep up, will you? Hermione fell out of the astronomy tower window in November, it's the only time she's ever needed rescuing and we weren't there to help her, and Hermione doesn't know who saved her, and Malfoy's admitting that he 'saved' her at some point… It's obvious, isn't it? It was Malfoy that night!"

"I think you're out of your mind." Harry said, clearly dismissing Ron as he turned over in his bed.

"Well, he'd have no reason to save her, you're right. Can't think of anything else…" Ron was speaking mostly to himself, but unbeknownst to him, Harry was listening intently to the boy talking behind him. "Unless Malfoy was the one trying to push her… yeah, that makes sense… and then when she didn't fall, he tried to take credit for saving her. Would be just like him, slimy little git. But then why would Hermione defend him? Harry, if he laid a finger on her to hurt her-"

"He didn't." Harry was so wrapped up in his own thoughts of disappointment that Ron couldn't give him a reason for Malfoy's odd behaviour, he'd forgotten for a moment who he was talking to.

"What?" Ron's frantic hateful ramblings were stopped short.

"What?" Harry responded, facing Ron with his face blank.

"How do you know he didn't?" Ron asked, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion. Harry didn't answer. "Harry… what do you know that I don't?"

"Nothing!" Harry shrugged it off unconvincingly.

" _Harry_ …"

"Ron, it's nothing, just leave it alone!"

"Harry, I swear to Merlin, if you don't tell me right now…" Ron threatened, his lit wand clutched offensively in his hand.

"She was trying to end it, alright?!" Harry and Ron simultaneously looked as though they'd been slapped. "I didn't… I mean… she wasn't…" Harry spluttered.

 _She was trying... end what?_

 _Wait._

 _What?_

Ron's anger drained from his face, along with all of the colour. Quietly, he said, "tell me you didn't mean that. Tell me that wasn't what you meant to say."

"No… I didn't mean to say that."

"But was it the truth?" Harry looked at the floor. "Was it?"

"Yes." Harry's voice was almost non-existent.

"But… why would you keep that from me?"

"For her sake. She didn't want anyone to know."

"How do you know then?"

"I figured it out."

"Well… does anyone else know?"

"I think she told Ginny."

"When?"

"Pretty soon after."

"I'm the only one who didn't know?"

"I'm sorry, mate."

"Oh."

There was silence for more than a few minutes.

"I think you should go to bed, mate." Harry said, in the gentlest voice he'd ever used towards Ron before.

"Yeah, I think I should." Ron drifted over to his previously untouched bed, sinking into it as his mind raced.

It was gone four o'clock in the morning before he finally closed his eyes.

* * *

The next morning, Ron waited as long as possible in the Gryffindor common room to catch Hermione before breakfast, but in the end had to give up and head to Defence Against the Dark Arts. Hermione turned up, looking frazzled, four seconds before Snape entered, looking as mean as ever.

"Ten points from Gryffindor for lateness, Miss Granger, and don't let it happen again. Now, this lesson will examine the methods to employ when facing a full grown Hinkypunk during the day. As we know, at night their forms become much weaker and are therefore easier to defeat, but during the daytime one must use…" Ron quickly zoned out, looking over at his stressed friend, who was avidly noting down every word Snape said.

For some moments, he just couldn't picture it. He couldn't picture Hermione – _their_ Hermione – in so much pain and despair, stood a foot away from certain death, longing for it. Not when she was like this. Her mind forever whirring, her hand in the air, her heels off the ground as she leaned on her toes, desperate to share her vast knowledge with everyone. He could see her, taking the lead in the group, figuring out the logical points, but also taking on the emotional strain of Harry's innermost workings, as only she or he himself could do. Running from Death Eaters, firing spell after ingenious spell behind her, never missing, in the Department of Mysteries last year. She was always just so… _alive_.

But then he could picture it. And he wished he had remained unable to. He could see her, pale and cold and drained. He could see her hair deflated, her eyes open and glassy, unseeing. He could hear her last breath, a sigh of relief as she departed this world, and he could see her tears. He could almost feel her crying out.

For the first time in six months, Ron really looked at her. She was faded, her hair lank, her face pale and sunken, her eyes too big and too dark in her face. He could see the bones in her hands and wrists, the rest of her artfully concealed with clothing. For the first time, Ron really saw her. All that sadness. So much pain.

And then he saw her at the top of the astronomy tower, and he tried to force this image back. He didn't want to see it. He could imagine her stood so close, too close, to the ledge, moving her feet forward, and… a pair of hands, pulling her back. He wished with all his heart they were his own hands, but they belonged to his enemy. Malfoy had saved his best friend whilst Ron slept soundly in his own comfortable bed. He was overcome with disgust for himself, disgust for his enemy. How dare Draco Malfoy put his slimy hands anywhere near Hermione Granger? How dare Ronald Weasley sleep peacefully whilst she was on the verge of suicide? He couldn't stand himself, and he couldn't stand being grateful to Malfoy. But this was Hermione. What on earth would they have done without her?

Ron had barely recognised that the lesson had ended and he'd been walking for a while until his knees finally buckled at the bottom of the Entrance Hall stairs. The corridor was mostly empty, aside from the occasional passer-by, and he assumed everyone else had gone outside to embrace the first sunny day of the year on their breaks.

As his anger towards Malfoy and himself subsided, he suddenly felt unreasonably, unjustifiably angry towards Hermione. What had she been _thinking_? If she'd have killed herself… Harry needed her! They needed her! To put them, even in theory, in the position of burying their closest friend in the ground… it was so cruel. She didn't think of their grief. She didn't think of her parents' grief. She didn't even think of the poor soul who'd stumble upon her in the early morning, sprawled unmoving at the bottom of that miserable tower. They could have lost her forever!

 _They could have lost her forever…_

"Won-Won!" A screech filled his perception, and it was as if a dam had broken inside him. He was so angry.

"Oh, piss off, will you?" Ron shouted.

Lavender's smile dropped so quickly it was as if he'd switched off the light. Her eyes filled, and before Ron could call her back, apologise profusely for his outburst, she'd gone.

"Ronald Weasley!" Hermione appeared at the top of the stairs, and he turned to see a fuming Hermione storming down towards him. "That was so incredibly rude and uncalled for!" Ron had the decency to look very ashamed of himself. "How dare you speak to Lavender like that!"

And before he could stop himself, Ron's anger rose again. "How dare you try to kill yourself and not even tell me!"

Hermione's face betrayed her shock. Ron, coming back to himself again, glanced around the Hall. It was empty once again. He hadn't betrayed her secret to the whole school, at least.

"How- How do you-" Hermione couldn't find the words.

"Harry told me."

"But I didn't tell Harry…"

"He worked it out."

Hermione was utterly silent. Ron's anger seeped into the floor after one glance at his friend's face.

"Come down here. Please." Ron turned back to face the huge wooden doors in front of him. He heard the sounds of Hermione's light steps as she descended carefully towards him. She sat about two feet away from him on the same step.

"I'm sorry." Hermione looked at her hands, clasped and fidgeting in her lap.

Ron couldn't stand it. His anger at her well and truly dissipated now, he gently pulled her wrist away from her lap, halting the twitchy movement and encouraging her to look at him.

"You're _sorry_?" Hermione looked down again. "What in the name of Merlin's baggy v-neck are _you_ sorry for?" Hermione looked at his face. " _I'm_ sorry I didn't see it. Any of it. All of the stuff you were going through. And I'm sorry I was part of it."

"It's not your fault." She began to tear up. "I know you know I was upset about Lavender. But the thing is, I wasn't jealous, and I want you to know that."

Ron was perplexed. "I didn't think you were-"

"Yes, you did, because I thought I was for a while, too. And I know you thought you were jealous of McLaggen as well. But you weren't. Before we properly go into this conversation, I need you to understand the way I feel about you, because I think it will help me clear my head a bit once I've said it. I don't fancy you, Ron." Ron looked bemused. "I don't. I honest to Merlin thought I did, but when you started dating Lavender, I realised I wasn't jealous of her. I was upset that we'd stopped being friends. We'd stopped hanging around together and sharing everything. I want you to know that I'm not attracted to you, but I love you so much, Ron."

"Yeah…" Ron said. "Yeah. You know what? You're kind of right." Hermione smiled a little. "I'm not going to be the most clichéd person in the world and tell you that you're 'like my sister' because you're not. She's a right nasty little-" Hermione coughed abruptly, "-to me sometimes. You're my best friend. I thought I was jealous of that boneheaded brute McLaggen, and even about Krum, but maybe the truth is that I knew they just weren't good enough for you."

"Ron…" Hermione choked up. She suddenly grabbed him rather tightly around the throat in a hug. He hugged her back more gently.

"But I know it wasn't just me that made you want to jump, was it?" The conversation turned dark again, but Ron knew that this was inevitable. Eventually, they would have to talk about this, and it was now. Hermione broke away, but carried on sat closer than before.

"No. It was a lot of things, and I'm talking about them to Ginny all the time now. I promise, I'm so much better. And I'm trying. I really am trying."

"I believe you."

"When you're depressed, almost everything is a way to get you down. I fell into a spiral of thinking that I wasn't good enough for anyone in my life, and as a result, I withdrew. The more I withdrew, the more I felt I wasn't good enough. It's a crushing cycle."

"It was… real… depression, then?"

"In a way, it still is. It doesn't really feel like it's gone away when I do get low again, but when I'm not low, I feel better. I'd say that's progress."

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

"What does it… feel like? Depression?" Ron asked, delicately but desperately curious.

"I don't mean this to sound belittling in any sense, but until you've experienced it properly, it's a very difficult thing to understand. It's not just all crushing sadness and hopelessness all the time, but when you're not sad, there's just nothing. It's like a void where your feelings should be. Sometimes it feels like it might even be better to face the feelings, but it was the feelings that brought me to the point of wanting to jump that night, not the void."

Ron nodded slightly and seemed to just think over the new information.

"It's okay to ask, you know?" Hermione said. "If you ever wanted to know anything about this, I don't mind you asking. I'd rather you ask and be better off for the knowledge than just guess."

"Okay… I will ask you. If I think of anything, that is. I know you've said you already have Ginny for all this, but really, if you ever need another side to look at it from… I mean, I know I'm not the most emotional of blokes, and I'm maybe not equipped to deal with girl problems-" Hermione whacked his arm lightly, smirking a little. "I mean it. If you need someone, I'm here."

"Thanks, Ron." Hermione smiled truly.

"You're welcome, mate." And he wrapped her in another tight hug.

* * *

Two hours of conversation later, the two had finally stood to return to the common room when none other than a strangely happy Luna Lovegood drifted peacefully down the stairs towards them.

"Oh, hello, Luna."

"Hi, Hermione. Ron, I thought I should tell you that I spoke to Lavender on your behalf… and I don't think you ought to be worried about her reaction to your breakup anymore." Luna dreamily smiled at him. Ron's first response was to stand up and spin her around in a hug, but as if realising what he was doing, he promptly dropped her back onto her feet, pushing her away but keeping his hands on her shoulders.

"Huh?" He said confusedly. "Oh! Thank you so much! What did you say? How did you do it?" Ron said quickly.

"I found her crying in the library, and I just explained to her why people who aren't meant to be end up arguing a lot and resenting each other. I told her it was probably better to end things now. You know how drawn out breakups can get nastier the longer they go on. She was very upset at first, but… you know…" Luna trailed off as she was distracted by something unseen out of the window. "She asked me to break up with you for her."

Ron resisted the urge to hug her again. "Thank you _so_ much, Luna. I owe you."

Luna waved her hand vaguely dismissively with a smile and made her way gently past them, and out of the door. Almost as if on cue, Lavender, Parvati and a Hufflepuff girl whose name Ron didn't know strolled into the hall. Ron, face flushed red upon seeing her, appeared to nearly faint with relief when his recently-ex girlfriend gave a small smile and a half-hearted wave in his direction. What had Luna possibly done to turn this obsessively clingy girl into a mature woman within the last two hours? He wondered at the back of his mind whether she'd messed with her head a little with magic to make her so calm, but as unusual as Luna was, Ron decided it was ridiculous to suggest she'd manipulate someone that way. She wasn't the kind to be malicious with magic, and Luna _did_ seem to have this naturally calming, bigger-perspective influence on people. Whatever it was, Ron almost regretted not speaking to Luna much sooner to fix his relationship. Almost.

 _Thinking about it, though,_ Ron thought vaguely, a small smile still on his lips, _Lavender did look a teensy bit dazed._


	15. Idea

Potions lesson. Brilliant.

Draco's short-tempered and sulky mood had only increased since the cheerful and selective Professor Slughorn had taken over his favourite lesson on the first day back. He knew he'd have to willingly entrap himself in a room full of Hufflepuff idiots, Ravenclaw snobs, and worse yet, the Gryffindor trio. Draco's mission meant that he was constantly on edge around both teachers and the three meddling Gryffindors now, and it had become habit for him to practice Occlumency wherever he was. However, his mental control seemed more important now than ever, since all of his ridiculous chance encounters with the resident Gryffindor princess this year. Draco would not underestimate the girl any longer.

Having arrived first, he watched the trickle of students become a river, sneering at anyone who looked his way. Amongst the stream of students pouring in, Zabini stepped into the classroom with his chin in the air, the picture of pureblood grace. It suddenly struck Draco exactly how much he'd allowed himself to fall apart this year. His hair lank and over his eyes, his weight dropping, and his silent, cautious exterior were all features his father would never have adopted. Even the way he walked around the castle, head down, quickly, his father would be ashamed by. _Never mind the stress, Draco_ , he could hear Severus sneering in his head _, keeping up appearances is the difference between life and death_.

Zabini looked over at him, and Draco grimaced back. It had been two weeks since he'd spoken to Zabini, since that night on the Quidditch pitch. He'd been refusing up until this point to acknowledge in any form that the conversation they'd had affected him in any sense. This was quite difficult to do as he'd been giving Zabini the silent treatment. Zabini on the other hand, rather than being put out by Draco's coldness, had been growing more and more amused with the turn of events and obviously thought that the angrier Draco was about it, the more likely he was right. Prick.

If only he knew that Draco was giving him the cold shoulder only out of the upkeep of his dignity; the statement Zabini had made was so outrageous, Draco was refusing to associate with him any further. If he could so easily run his mouth about ridiculous things to a Death Eater before Voldemort truly came to power, then he was a risk for afterwards as well. And Draco could not afford to be connected with madness. Not with the current climate. At the end of this, the Malfoys would stand tall next to the Dark Lord again, and anything that could compromise that had to be removed entirely early on. Zabini's friendship was unfortunate collateral damage. But Zabini's smirk didn't waver, and so Draco's scowl didn't either.

The lesson passed without incident, excluding the moment a ginger Hufflepuff girl seared off one of her eyebrows, but it concluded with no luck either. After Potter and Granger both concluded their versions of the Anxiety-Accentuating Potion minutes before him, Draco's hopes of being the best this lesson were dashed. He consoled himself with the thought that it wouldn't matter in the end anyway.

"Hold on just a moment, class, I'd like to speak with you all before you leave." Slughorn shouted over his belly as the class began to pack their quills and potions books away. _Oh no_ , Draco thought, _there's no chance this'll be good news._

"Settle down, settle down. Right, over the next two months, I am going to be partnering the class up to make one of the dangerously tricky potions off of a list I have compiled." A grumble of disapproval ran through the class. "Now, now, that's enough. You will obviously spend at least one month discussing which one you want to make, finding the recipe, locating and acquiring the ingredients, and you will spend the final month brewing it. Those who complete it early will be expected to spend the rest of their time composing an essay on the correct ways to brew the potion and its intended effects, as well as possible side effects."

Slughorn began handing out rolls of parchment with neatly inscribed instructions on them for the two-month project ahead. Once he returned to the front of the classroom, he pulled out a separate roll of parchment. "Now, before I begin, I'd like to tell you all that these partnerships were based on tested abilities, in order to produce the best work possible and give all students a chance to work at their own pace to fulfil their own potential. Therefore, the pairings are _strictly non-negotiable_." Draco experienced a sinking feeling. He liked barely anyone in this entire classroom. At least he knew he wouldn't be paired with anyone really stupid at Potions this year, as the beginning of NEWTs had weeded out all the better students. He couldn't imagine his own horror if there was a chance he'd be paired with Longbottom.

"Right, and so in no particular order, of course: Blaise Zabini and Michael Corner; Terry Boot and Lavender Brown; Parvati Patil and Ronald Weasley; Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger…"

 _Are. You. Kidding. Me._

Draco felt his stomach sink faster than Granger's face. He couldn't help the look of disdain that coloured his features.

"…Dean Thomas and Ernie Macmillan; Hannah Abbott and Daphne Greengrass; Susan Bones and Anthony Goldstein."

"Sir, what about Harry?" Granger's voice piped up as she stuck her hand in the air for the twenty-sixth time that lesson. Anyone could tell she was hoping he'd made a mistake in the partnering. She and Potter were the best students, marginally above Draco, so she technically should have been paired with him. For the first time ever, being the third best student was a hopeful concept to Draco.

"Oh, come now, there was an uneven number of students in the class, and Potter's my best student, he won't need a partner, will you, my boy?" Slughorn said jovially, placing a proud hand on Potter's shoulder. Scarhead didn't look particularly confident. Draco smirked, before realising this meant he was stuck with Granger.

Though there were more than a few protests of displeasure with their partners, everyone seemed to move somewhat unwillingly towards each other. Draco sent a venomous glance Granger's way that clearly told her he wasn't moving. Granger rolled her eyes and gathered her things, dropping them ungracefully onto the desk next to him.

Neither spoke for the rest of the lesson.

* * *

When Monday morning next rolled back around, and Draco's attempts at creating a new pathway to the second vanishing cabinet had so far proven fruitless, he was already in a foul mood because of Slughorn's ridiculous decision anyway. He threw back the green quilt, cursing every name he could think of (and Potter's twice), and threw himself reluctantly out of bed.

After a weary breakfast, he made his way, hastily and with a glare plastered on his face, back down the Slytherin common room and collapsed into an armchair. Two third year students who were sat nearby quickly closed their books and scurried out of the room. Unfortunately he was quickly joined by Zabini.

He dropped himself into the adjacent armchair with a smirk on his face.

"You'd better hurry up and get ready, Draco. Potions is about to start." All of the implications were written clearly in Zabini's smug expression.

Draco could only imagine the carnage that would take over the course of the two months that he would be forced to spend next to Potter's favourite know-it-all. He had been envisioning the entire project failing and all of the possible hexes and curses which they might throw at each other. Not to mention what his master will ask of him once he found out that he was partnered with the girl. As if the Dark Lord needed to give Draco another reason to fear for his life.

Angrily, fearfully, disdainfully, Draco trudged his way out of the common room, completely ignoring Zabini, and turned left to make his way to the Potions classroom. Oh, how he missed Professor Snape's lessons. Zabini strode confidently behind Draco as the both entered the classroom last. Professor Slughorn stood at the front of the classroom preparing himself for the lesson, and it was at this moment that Draco recognised the absence of normal conversation in the room. Turning slowly to his right, he saw Granger, the Hufflepuff girl Bones, and the Ravenclaw Goldstein sat at the table usually occupied by himself, Greengrass, Parkinson, and Zabini. He could not restrain his eyes from rolling in disgust.

He dumped his bag heavily onto the desk and slumped on his stool.

"Okay, class." Slughorn unnecessarily brought the lesson to order. "You all have your instructions. There are no rules, as long as you successfully brew a potion from scratch off of the certified list you have been provided. Let the concocting commence!"

Draco looked at Granger. She looked at him.

She took a deep breath.

"Right, well, I've been doing some research on the options for potions we've been given, and I've made a list of-"

"You don't actually think you're going to be running this whole project do you?" Draco sniped. He knew how desperate she was to do well.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do." She stared him down defiantly, and he knew she'd been preparing for this exact moment since they'd been assigned partners. "I think you're going to let me run this project the way I want it run because you're obviously wishing to do well in this subject and I am the best in the class. I think you're going to let me run it because you don't want to have to do all the hard work, and most of all, I think you're going to let me run it because you're afraid that I know a secret of yours that's even bigger than the secret of mine that you know, understand?"

She'd said all of this very matter-of-factly and in such a tone that the other two occupants of the table didn't hear. Her insolence infuriated Draco, but true to his breeding, he hid it very well.

"My, my, you're a bossy one, aren't you, Granger?" He smirked. She remained righteously silent. He decided to continue trying to needle her in another direction. "Besides, you aren't the best in the class. That would be Potter, according to Slughorn."

"Harry's using tricks and wit to scrape top marks in this class, and it wouldn't work on anyone who wasn't in his fan club trying to secure some kind of strange friendship." She scowled. She wasn't very good at concealing emotion, Draco noted. In the same thought, he immediately wondered how she had managed to hide her suicidal thoughts from almost everyone that she knew this entire time, but then he remembered her two closest friends were self-absorbed dunderheads. He'd probably want to chuck himself off the astronomy tower if he'd been friends with those morons for six years, too. Luckily, he chose his friends more carefully. "Anyway, I've made a list of the potions which I believe are the best to-"

"I want to do the Walking Line Potion."

Granger pinched her nose and breathed deeply again, but when she looked up, there was a confusion and curiosity in her eyes. "That's… actually on my list, Malfoy."

"Good. Let's do that one."

"Alright." Granger was irritated. He'd known picking a potion straight off without even looking at her list would annoy her, which is why he did. She deserved it, anyway, making his life so difficult. Not that she knew she was… but still. "Right, well, we should start by going to the library and finding the instructions to make it. All of the potions on Slughorn's list aren't in the textbook, so this is more of an in-context project where we have to sort out everything ourselves. I suppose after we've found the list of ingredients, we'll need to find textbooks with where to find them all, I'll bet a few won't be available in the apothecary…"

She was speaking more to herself than to Draco, hurriedly scanning over the instruction for what he was sure was the hundredth time. As he watched her, he knew how wrong Zabini was. They were nothing alike; she was obsessive about perfection in schoolwork, and competitive, and academic-minded. Draco suddenly wanted to tear his hair out.

 _On the bright side_ , he thought, _at least I know I'll do well in this project doing minimal work._ Maybe this wouldn't be as much of a train wreck as he'd originally thought.

Thinking about it, she very clearly wanted to beat Harry for first place in this class, and he'd been trying to do that – and mostly succeeding – since they stepped off the train in their first year. Obviously they were both intelligent. He thought about each time Granger had bested him in class and knew she must be at least somewhat resourceful, even if most of her resources were textbooks. And he knew he was resourceful, he'd been forced to be this year above all else. All in all, with this project, and this project _only_ , they seemed fairly similar-minded.

Whilst he had been in mid-thought, Granger had dashed to the front of the classroom to Slughorn, where he was writing something on a slip of paper for them. She then hurried back towards the table, grabbed her bag, and was almost out of the door again.

"Come on, Malfoy, we need to get a head start whilst everyone else is still deciding on a potion!"

He rolled his eyes, but gathered his things and trailed slowly after her.

When they got into the library, Granger immediately went over to the fearsome Madam Pince and handed over what he now realised was a permission slip for the restricted section. She then hastened back over to him and the two headed into the forbidden section of the library, searching for the Walking Line Potion in any book, just to give them a reference. Granger was taking tome after tome off of the shelves and stacking them up in her arms. He wondered how someone so small could manage so much weight, but then he saw her quickly wave her wand over the next textbook she retrieved, and realised she was making them lighter with magic. Quick-thinking, he had to admit.

As they were at one of the desks a while later, books piled high around them as they were sat on opposite sides of the table, Draco was lazily scanning through the books Granger had pulled out, looking for any sign whatsoever of the Walking Line Potion. They'd been through almost a quarter of the books before Granger suddenly exclaimed.

"Here it is! The Walking Line Potion… Consists of fruit fly venom, Gurdyroot… oh no, this can't be right. It says Hag's Tears and Mashed Bloodroot are both ingredients."

"So?"

"Don't you read? Hag's Tears and Bloodroot together cause a sort of wormhole. It would simply drain whatever's in the cauldron. It's powerful, but only within a certain area." Granger seemed to have forgotten who she was talking to in place of sharing knowledge. Typical Granger. "The logical limit of the area, in this case, the cauldron, is where the magical hole would stop, but the cauldron would be useless afterwards, because you'd never be able to put anything in it."

"That makes no sense, Granger. Where on earth would everything in the cauldron go?" Draco said scathingly to the know-it-all. He had no doubt she'd know the answer, it was probably tucked up there in all that hair somewhere.

"It would be displaced into non-being. It's what Deirdre Hooper used to pioneer the Vanishing Charm, _Evanesco_. She took the principle of a magical hole devouring anything within a logical area and pulling it apart into non-being, and she turned it into a useful spell. But this has nothing to do with the Walking Line Potion, Malfoy." Granger primly returned to the project at hand.

But Draco was racing well ahead of the library and the Walking Line Potion. His mind was already whirring, already at least seven floors upstairs, in the Room of Requirement, with his broken cabinet. _What if…?_

Suddenly, after what seemed only milliseconds after the end of the conversation with Granger, Slughorn popped into the library to announce the end of the lesson. Before he thought about it, Draco mindlessly gathered his things and immediately bolted out of the room. He was already halfway up the stairs before anyone else had left the classroom. He was going to investigate this _now_.


	16. Fight

Ron, Harry and Hermione trudged through Hogsmeade, bag laden and jovial despite the freezing wind and sleet that had settled over the village. It was only late January, and the trio's cheeks burned a cold red as they entered the Three Broomsticks for a lunchtime break. As Harry shook the half-melted snow out of his hair and Hermione unwound her scarf from where it had been tightly clasped around her neck, Ron sat at the closest free booth; one right next to the bar where a curvy and smiling Madam Rosmerta was attending to her regular customers.

"Three butterbeers?" Harry asked, already taking his coin sack out of the pocket of his winter robe.

"Yes, please." Hermione stuffed her robe in beside her in the booth; the freezing temperatures stopped at the door, and a fire flickered cheerfully above the hearth in the corner.

"And for me," Ron smiled, and began to review his purchases. A new pair of knee-pads from Sprintwitches Sporting Needs, bags stuffed full with sweets from Honeydukes, and several more practical items for the lessons coming up. Hermione had ensured that they spend a significant proportion of the day browsing the apothecary and the book shop to buy supplies.

Hermione sat across the table from Ron, flicking distractedly through a book she'd said could help them get the memory Dumbledore wanted from Slughorn. She was quietly muttering to herself as Ron turned to definitely not stare at Madam Rosmerta, serving drinks merrily behind the bar. As Harry returned with carefully balanced drinks in his hand, Hermione immediately began harassing him with complex magical terminology and lore that Ron had never even heard of, and much less understood.

"Hermione, that wouldn't work! The spell wears off in half an hour, that wouldn't be enough time to convince him, even if the spell was strong enough to keep him influenced for that long."

"Oh, you're right! Well, what about this one? You could sneak in, hold your wand above your head for ten minutes and he'd feel compelled to tell you!" Madam Rosmerta polished glasses and Ron quickly turned away, red-faced, as she looked up in their direction.

"If I could hide in his cupboard without him noticing during a lesson for that long, I'm sure it would work, but he'd be on to us in minutes. Plus, I'd lose circulation in my wand arm." Harry seemed almost equally as uninterested as Ron.

"So go during the evening, whilst he's marking our essays! You'll just have to be very quiet. Oh, no, you can't do that either, the spell can only be performed during the hours between 10 o'clock and 3 o'clock. I'll keep looking." Harry took a grateful sip of his butterbeer as the conversation ceased, leaving a frothy trail on his upper lip as he did. Hermione continued scanning the pages of the book, but sighed when she turned her eyes briefly to Ron. "Ronald, if you don't start blinking soon, your eyes will shrivel up and fall out of their sockets."

Ron flushed a bright crimson and sank in his seat. "Hey! Not so loud, I think she heard you."

Hermione didn't even glance back up from her book. "Yes, because your hair-raising rubbernecking was far more subtle."

Ron quickly began picking at scratches in the worn wooden table's surface, mumbling disgruntledly at a smirking Hermione.

"Oh! I found one that might work! It's a bit odd, but all you have to do is chant this passage and turn around three times with-"

"Could you give it a rest, Hermione? We only stopped in here to sit down for a while and relax. Plus," Ron added in a lower tone, "Anyone could hear you in here."

"Well, I'm the only one who seems to be at all bothered that Harry's not even tried to find anything to help him with this task yet, and Dumbledore will want to see him again before long." She hissed back. Ron sighed and returned to pulling splinters out of the table. He knew a Hermione-mood when he saw one, and it usually meant they were in for an I-told-you-so speech sometime later in the week.

He was quickly out of butterbeer again, having used it as an excuse not to join in on the conversation, and he stood to get some more. He had just enough left of his Christmas money to buy himself, Harry, and Hermione all a drink each after his spending spree earlier, but his demeanour was still fairly contented. He deliberately swallowed the colour spreading across his cheeks and neck as Madam Rosmerta approached him.

"What can I get for you, Mr Weasley?"

"Three more butterbeers, please."

"Nine sickles altogether," She stated, pouring the first glass.

He fumbled to hand her the money, which she poured into her apron pocket, before handing up his drinks one by one. As he thanked her and turned back towards the table, he noticed Ginny and Luna sitting and sipping their own butterbeers only two tables across from where Harry and Hermione sat. His best friends appeared once again deep in debate around complicated methods of extracting memories, and he was reluctant to go back. Making his decision almost instantaneously, he set Harry and Hermione's drinks down at their table and wandered over to his sister and Luna with his own.

"Mind if I join you?" Ginny's and Luna's eyes settled on him, both confused but warm.

"'Course not, have a seat. We were just talking about the Quibbler article coming out next month. Apparently it features gnome treatment, and obviously we have so many in our garden." Ginny smiled.

"The key is to feed them regularly. They're less grumpy and more likely to bite you if you give them plum jam on toast every day."

"Why in the name of Merlin's saggy Y-front would you want them to bite you?"

"Their saliva of course!" Luna's eyes twinkled. "It's very good for blood pressure."

Ron actually laughed faintly with admiration of Luna's unashamed quirkiness, to which she simply smiled a little wider.

"Oh, shoot!" Ginny was routing through her bags desperately. "I think I've left my purse in Dervish and Banges. Sorry, I'll be back in a few minutes, that shop assistant looked a little light-fingered if you ask me." And with that, she dashed out of the pub, red hair whipping behind her, and her drink still half-full on the table. There was a one-sidedly awkward silence as Ron realised he'd very rarely been alone with Luna before, but she seemed perfectly content with simply sitting and gazing dreamily out of the dusty window.

"You know, I've heard that even though centaurs are more accustomed to using the stars for future-telling, they sometimes use the clouds to predict the future, too." Luna mused.

"Oh, really?" Ron's discomfort decreased a little with her conversation starter.

"Absolutely, Daddy did an article on it about three months ago. He said the centaurs seemed a bit unwilling to participate in an interview, so he assumed that they must have a reason to want to hide the information."

Ron's mouth curved in an unwitting and amused smile. "Or maybe they had wrackspurts and they couldn't remember."

Luna seemed to focus her eyes on Ron's face. "Maybe." Ron's original uneasiness with the eye contact diminished slightly as he realised she was happy to just sit in quiet, and there was no reason to force unnecessary conversation with her. It was a refreshing experience to sit and drink with Luna, and there was no point in putting up any sort of front; she had an uncanny way of seeing through people's masks with those huge, distracted eyes of hers. He noticed that it was not just the colour of them that reminded him strongly of Dumbledore. She always had that glint of knowledge that Dumbledore did, despite her vacant expression. It was equally as intriguing.

"Come on, time we got back to the castle, before it gets dark!" Hermione and Harry were suddenly stood next to him, already clad in their winter robes once again. Ron realised they'd just interrupted him staring into Luna's eyes, and flushed a delicate pink.

"Right, of course, let me just get my things."

He was more than slightly embarrassed.

* * *

Draco had just completed his purchase of some more very expensive emerald-coloured ink from Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop and was bracing himself against the cold at the door when saw he one of the Patil twins exiting Madam Puddifoot's across the street with the big brute of a Gryffindor Keeper. She didn't look particularly pleased. Draco wasn't surprised; everyone had heard the rumour of Granger's experience with him at Slughorn's party. Draco paused to watch them from the shop doorway as he wound his green and grey scarf back around his neck. McLaggen, looking pretty pleased with himself, was saying something that Draco couldn't hear from his distance.

And then he leaned in for a kiss. Padma, with a sour face and defiantly put-off body language, seemed very surprised that McLaggen still believed he was in a position to kiss her after what had clearly been an unimpressive date. She seemed to panic as he got closer, and in her alarm, pushed her hands back against his shoulders, preventing him from coming closer. Draco began to walk towards them on the opposite side of the street, pretending – as everyone else was – that he was not watching. And then McLaggen was shouting at Padma. And then she was shouting back.

 _Slap!_

Padma's face had a crimson streak across her cheekbone. McLaggen's hand was still open in the air. And Draco's wand was out of his pocket.

Draco's childhood and adolescence had been a turbulent one, that went without saying. His father and mother had always been emotionally distant, presumably because they were leading busy and important lives and they wanted him to toughen up to enter into the world of politics and money himself. His parents had argued like any other couple. But he had never, never seen his father raise a hand to his mother, or vice versa. It was one of their strictest teachings; that violence was wrong, in any context. Committing any form of domestic abuse was one of the only things that Draco was sure would make his parents disown him for the shame of it. Magical violence, on the other hand, was a whole other story.

"Expulso!" A bright blue bolt of energy smacked into McLaggen's side, and he was thrown backwards against the brick wall of Madam Puddifoot's by the force.

"Hey!" Of course they'd be here. Fantastic. Wonder boy and his sidekicks had just emerged from the Three Broomsticks. "What are you doing?" Scarface yelled.

"No, Harry, you missed it! McLaggen just… Protego!" Harry's shout had distracted Draco long enough for McLaggen to crawl to his feet again and fire a counter-shot towards Draco's unprotected back. Granger, unasked, had fired a shield charm between the two. This felt all too familiar to Draco.

"Hey, Prodigal Mudblood, what did I tell you about needing your protection against your boyfriends? Wasn't it something along the lines of… I don't?"

"Obviously you do. And it must really bruise your ego, too." She had ignored his jibes and started toward the fight, clearly intending to intervene again should a proper conflict break out. "Not that I'm contesting your reasoning for starting it." She glared a truly loathing glare in McLaggen's direction, who was still seething at the slight of Draco. Padma had had the good sense to make her subtle escape during the scuffle, still clutching her cheek with a look of shock.

"I didn't start it, you idiot! Romeo here started it when he raised a hand to his date."

"I didn't start it! Padma started it, she shoved me, you saw her shove me!" McLaggen's voice was muffled behind the shield charm, but his words did nothing to ease any of the witnesses' judgements of him. Rather contrastingly, most of the people surrounding the scene deepened even further their repugnant expressions towards him.

"You were forcing yourself on her, and then when she rejected you, you lost your temper and hit her, that's what I saw!" Draco was still seeing red.

"And it's not the first time you've forced yourself on a girl." Granger's expression was dark.

"Do... do you count as a girl, Granger?" Draco couldn't help himself; she'd jumped in most unwelcomely and embarrassed him by protecting him. If her moron friends hadn't distracted him, he could have taken McLaggen by himself.

"Don't you?" She fired back.

"Why are you here? Did one of the Gryffindorks leave your cage open again?"

"Oh, please, Malfoy. Go ahead, shock me. Say something intelligent for once. It's really disappointing that saying stupid things isn't painful."

"Ironic, given the Neanderthals you choose to spend your time with."

Her brown eyes flashed. "Do me a favour, please do not speak to me unless you intend to improve the silence."

"Only if you intend to improve your hair. It's an eyesore and it's insulting to make others look at it."

"Never heard that one before." She rolled her eyes. "If you ever had an original thought, I think your brain would die of shock!"

"Ah, but it'd do it with style and class. Anyone who told you to be yourself couldn't have given you worse advice!"

And so it continued. Unfortunately, the bickering and insult-hurling between Draco and Granger had proven distracting enough for everyone in the surrounding area that nobody noticed McLaggen raise his wand for a second time as the Protego shield faded.

"Expulso!"

The curse hit Granger squarely between the shoulder blades, and suddenly he couldn't remember anything else.

Draco seemed to come round again a few seconds later, crumpled very uncomfortably against a brick wall, his head throbbing, and a weight pressed on his leg and chest. It appeared to be trying to say something amidst groans of pain and awkwardness.

"Are you alright?" Granger's voice was vague and detached, but the contents of the question surprised him into answering.

"Why on earth would you care?"

He could see her frown as she desperately tried to disentangle herself from him, emitting pain all over his body.

"I'm not utterly heartless, you know!"

He just looked at her.

Scarhead and the Weasel made an appearance at this moment, pulling Granger off of him and repeatedly asking if she was okay, despite her obviously being conscious and mostly uninjured. He'd broken her fall. She looked down at him, seeming to realise that he'd taken most of her impact with the wall against his back, and uncertainly held her hand out as if she intended to help him up. He ignored it and stood slowly without her proffered hand, but he didn't scoff at it like he normally would. Her behaviour had confused him. One minute she's verbally abusing him like there's no tomorrow and the next she's helping him stand up? And asking if he was alright? It was a change of pace that he was not prepared for.

McLaggen had made his exit during their scramble to stand, and Granger's friends had carted her away from him as quickly as possible. He was almost alone on the street again, save for the occasional passer-bys who stared at his dishevelled appearance, realised he could see them watching him, and quickly looked in any other direction. But he didn't care about them.

He begun a slow walk back up to the school.


	17. Laughter

Draco knew that he had been subconsciously waiting for this Potions lesson all week, and he had hated himself because of it. Since Saturday he had been almost dazed, but he had been forced to admit that he was curious of that bushy haired bookworm who had caused so much of his stress. Curious only in a strictly scientific way, of course. But she didn't make any sense at all. Her words and her actions didn't correlate on any level. Her verbal assault on him and then holding out her hand to help him regain his footing. Her big, confident bravado with her friends and then her attempting suicide only weeks earlier. And most particularly, her knowing about his saving her life and using it against him, but not telling anybody else what she knew. What was she thinking? If she had any idea of the horrific consequences of his actions, she'd stay away from him completely for her own safety. She might be a truly atrocious pain in his arse and a muggleborn to boot, but even muggles had self-preservation instincts, didn't they?

As he marched silently over to his regular space at the back of the dungeon classroom, frowning pointlessly at Granger's head with her nose buried in a textbook, he considered this further. It was certainly true that people had avoided him more this year than any year previously. If anyone came near him, a look seemed to be enough to warn them off. Surely even the most muggle-like muggleborns were driven back by the dangerous aura that surrounded him. The precarious look in his eyes was more serious than it had ever been before this year, and people were repelled by it. He looked over again at the stubbornly oblivious bookworm. Everyone except her. She didn't even seem to notice. He wondered if perhaps that said far more about her view of him than a reaction might. That she didn't even notice.

Slughorn did little more than announce the beginning of class before sending them on their merry ways to work on their projects this lesson, and in a routine Draco was reluctant to become familiar with, Granger dragged him up to the library before anyone else had left their seats.

A few minutes into being seated in the back of the library and assigned a stack of books that Granger had collected upon arrival, the two were sat quietly in the relative silence of the library, with only the sound of pages turning to entertain Draco's ears.

That was until the two most irritating Ravenclaws he'd ever known had decided that the almost entirely empty library was not appropriately empty enough for them to sit, and chose the closest possible table to Draco and Granger's. Anthony Goldstein and Michael Corner discussed loudly the potion they were brewing, taking great care in letting anyone within earshot know that they had overheard Slughorn saying it was his favourite one to brew, and glancing nonchalantly over their shoulders towards the two.

Granger had simply rolled her eyes and ignored their bait. Shortly after this though, Granger decided that they were better off beginning to make their potion in the classroom as long as they had all of the books they needed, so they hauled their loads back downstairs and resumed their studies in the comparative quiet of the classroom instead. Draco was still mildly aggravated, however. This turned to a much stronger annoyance when the two irritants followed them back to the classroom, also. Granger and he began preparing the first ingredients for their potion. Draco was ranting inside of his head. If only their arrogance matched their abilities, Draco could understand it. But these Ravenclaws were the partners that were most closely in competition with them for Slughorn's highest grades, along with Harry, and so Draco couldn't resist a jab.

"Imagine being so insecure in your own intellectual ability that you felt the need to get physically closer to those brighter than you to feel as if you have any hope at all of passing the class. How pathetic."

Granger shook her head but did not look up. He thought he heard her mutter the word "boys" under her breath in exasperation, but chose to overlook it.

"As if you have any actual brains outside of your father's head, Malfoy." Goldstein snubbed.

"Oh please, you morons are the biggest insults to Ravenclaw since Gilderoy Lockhart." The two boys huffily turned back around, clearly out of comebacks and unwilling to engage with the Slytherin any longer. Draco shook his head in irritation. "Those pricks are intellectually closer to hippogriffs than wizards." He muttered.

Granger snorted delicately and immediately stopped.

Draco instantly whipped his head around, intending to put her in her place, how dare she laugh at him? But then his eyes slowly focused and he realised, by the non-rebuttal of his insults towards the Ravenclaws, by the stained colour of her cheeks, and by the way she now refused to raise her head an inch from staring at her chopping board... had she been laughing… with him?

"Did you just… laugh?"

"Of course not!" She flustered.

"You… laughed at what I said."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes. You did,"

"No. No, I didn't."

"You think I'm funny, Granger." One corner of Draco's mouth rose in disbelief.

"I think you look very funny."

He smirked. "As if you have ever seen what I look like through that dense mess of twigs you call hair. The point is, you just laughed at what I said."

Granger stubbornly refused to look up at him and continued chopping her flobberworm, slightly more aggressively than before. "I think your comments indicating your superior beliefs about other students are no funnier than the flobberworm that just escaped off of your chopping board, Malfoy. I pity it above all else."

Draco scowled and bent to scoop said flobberworm back up off of the floor.

He thought he saw a grin on her face as he stood back up and threw the worm onto the chopping board again, but she'd looked back at her own work before he could really tell.

Stuck-up bookworm. "You laughed." He maintained. She just sighed exasperatedly.

She got so lost into her work and the books scattered across the desk that she didn't seem to notice when she accidentally brushed her fingertips across the back of his hand when she reached for another lacewing fly.

He noticed.

It was as if an electric shock had run up his arm and through his spine. Luckily, all his years of calm and collected masking of his feelings allowed him to not jump back in surprise like his body urged him to, but it had been _difficult_. She had carried on with her work without a second thought. He can't have been the only one to notice that, to feel that.

Just her dirty blood. Dirty blood. He was disgusted, he told himself sternly. His heart palpitating in his chest as if he'd actually been electrically shocked _only_ because he'd have to boil his hand tonight. That was all.

She continued with the rest of their session in peaceful and focused silence, the only conversation being solely based on their project. He spent the time trying to control the almost hot tingles that had broken out through his stomach and chest and telling himself that it was loathing. Really.

Bloody hell.

* * *

Draco lay lifelessly in his bed, the emerald green curtains pulled tightly shut around him as he stared at the dark wood above him. He had thought about going up to work on the vanishing cabinet, but as soon as his head had landed on his pillows he'd known he was not going to be moving tonight, regardless of the immanency of his punishments. He actually felt a small thrill at defying orders, despite no one but him being aware of it.

He'd followed orders his whole life, long before the Dark Lord had returned from the dead. His parents had always been so concerned with their reputation and standing within the wizarding community, he'd never been allowed to go outside to play, even as a child. He had spent his days reading, mostly. His future had been written in stone from the second he was born. Always planned and enforced by his parents, his mother out of love and his father out of pride.

But his father was gone. At least for now. Locked up in Azkaban, how was his father to know of anything in his life? He could do almost anything he wanted, provided he doesn't get in too much trouble, and his father would never know or be able to stop him. But he was not used to this freedom; he barely knew what to do with it. In some ways, having your future planned and enacted for him had been a whole lot easier than having to figure it out himself.

Well, not entirely by himself. Apparently, fate insisted that his and Granger's lives are connected somehow. Until this year, he'd hated her with a burning passion. Her filthy blood, her know-it-all attitude, her consistency in outsmarting him in every way possible, it had been _infuriating_.

But now… it's not that he _liked_ the girl. At all. But he had no room left for hate. Everything he did, everything he said, everything he felt was just consumed by overwhelming, crushing fear. He couldn't feel hate for anyone anymore. Not the Weasel, not Saint Potter, and not her. Especially not her. Since that night on the tower he'd realised she was almost exactly as lost as him. And it was reassuring to him to know he wasn't as alone as he'd thought. And it was entertaining for him to bicker with her; it took his mind off of the bigger issues, reminded him of easier times.

OK. Maybe there was a very distant possibility that liked her slightly more than he ever had before. Maybe. She was just a little less infuriating now he'd seen a vulnerable side to her, too.

In the quiet aloneness of his bedroom, he felt blissfully alone with his own thoughts. Finally, _finally_ , allowed to think whatever he wanted, just this once. He would go back to a stony-masked Death Eater tomorrow, but tonight, he was Draco.

And he wondered if in another world, another life, one not ravaged by war, he and Granger could have been friends.

He remembered the pulsing inside his ribcage when her fingers had brushed his hand, the jolt of energy he'd felt. He felt dazed.

Oh, _bloody hell_ , if Zabini turned out to be right, he'd never hear the end of it, he scowled.

And just at that moment, in the middle of the only peaceful thoughts he'd had since June, his left arm burned with a familiar scrutinising pain. The Dark Lord called to him.


	18. Warned

Draco's cloak billowed out behind him in the frigid February air. The moon above him gleamed, but the pale luminescence did not calm him one bit. Despite the freezing temperatures, a cold sweat had beaded on his neck; he wiped it away anxiously. As he reached the edge of the Hogwarts grounds, he took several deep breaths and steadied the almost constant mental wall in preparation for his plight. He did not feel ready, but he apparated.

It was no warmer in the shadow of his home, Malfoy Manor, as he stood unwillingly outside of the large and elaborate wrought-iron gates. He knew what waited for him on the inside. He didn't think he wanted to know. He quickly shoved the thought to the back of his mind, straightened his back, and walked through the magical wards of his house. His arm still burned.

Outside of the door to the silent but full drawing room, he put on his well-practiced poker face, and pushed the door.

He took his customary seat midway down the oval table, meeting the Dark Lord's eyes only once to nod in respect, before dropping his gaze to his lap. He was one of the last to arrive, and the gathering begun only moments after he had taken his seat.

"Welcome," the Dark Lord's voice was barely a whisper, but it only intensified the piercing silence. "My friends. My decision is made." He looked at every single member in turn before continuing. Only Bellatrix stared back in awe and admiration. "The war will begin very soon. Albus Dumbledore has left this choice to me. The Ministry continually attempts to provoke a reaction from us, but we very well know that their power is a paper fortress. The Order of the Phoenix are our only real threat." He paused, allowing the Death Eaters time to agree with him. "This war will begin in four months' time. The trigger… will be the death of an Order of the Phoenix member."

The rumble began low in the room, approving tones echoed on the stone walls. "My Lord, which member have you chosen to be our beacon?" Bellatrix's hands looked as if they might reach for his as she looked longingly at his crimson eyes.

He considered this for a moment, as if he hadn't already planned this move in advance. "The arrests of two low-lying members of my beloved Death Eaters caused a great deal of unrest among us. It seems only fair that we should take a member of lesser-importance from them. One who would force the famous Boy-Who-Lived to show his weaknesses, and therefore collapse their army in on itself."

Draco already knew what was coming.

"Potter's two closest friends, as we discovered from our dear Severus and Draco-" He desperately tried not to flinch at the sound of his own name, "-are a Blood Traitor, Ronald Weasley, and a Mudblood by the name of Hermione Granger. We do not need the blood of a purity like Mr Weasley on our hands. No matter the filth he chooses to surround himself with, such immaculate magical blood cannot be wasted frivolously. It will be… Miss Granger who is their downfall."

Celebratory laughter bounced around the room now, but it sounded distant and detached to Draco. He realised he wasn't breathing and forced his lungs to pull and push the air. He listened to the rest of the plan without really hearing it. The meeting continued like this, with the Dark Lord's grand demands and ideas thoroughly supported by all of the gathered Death Eaters but Draco. The tasks delegated, and the discussion had, without anyone once noticing the cracks in Draco's outward calm. When the meeting finally concluded, he had only one positive thought to console himself with, circling in his overcrowded mind; at least it would not be him who had the task of taking the girl down.

* * *

"Wake up." Zabini rolled over. "Wake up _now_ , Zabini, or so help me I will drag you out of this bed by your toenails."

He groaned and sat up. "What the hell do you want, Malfoy? It's three o'clock in the morning!"

Draco did not respond, simply leaving the room with the door open, waiting for Zabini to follow him into the dimly lit common room. The fire had nearly died now, so it would be dark enough for the two to remain unrecognised by snooping students from their dormitories.

"If this is about that stupid Granger thing, I'm going to punch you in the neck, Malfoy." Zabini collapsed heavily into the adjacent armchair and stared expectantly at Draco, sleep still clouding his vision.

"It is about her." Zabini's eyebrows drew together, finally noticing the stress on Draco's face. Not schoolground stress; very clearly dark, adult stress. Zabini sat a little further up in his chair. "But not what you think. Look, I can't take this anymore, I'm losing my mind. I have to tell somebody, somebody who has more than three brain cells."

Draco's breath was coming ragged again, and he forced himself to calm down, but Zabini did not interrupt. "You already know what I am." He lifted his left sleeve to present the writhing black image of the skull and serpent on his forearm. Zabini nodded once, tensely. "He called me to him tonight. We all gathered. He has a new plan, he's figured out the way to start the war."

Zabini sat silently, watching as the last of Draco's restraint left his system.

" _Help me_." Draco put his face in his hands. "I don't know what to do… Snape's going to take her _hostage_ in my _house_! He's going to keep her there for _months_! Torturing her! And then…" His voice lost all inflection now. "Granger's death is going to be the start of the war."

The only way that Draco knew his words had had a deeper effect was that Zabini's expression froze in place. He remained silent for a few moments, muddling through the information bombshell that Draco had dropped on him. He opened his mouth twice to speak and closed it again before finally speaking.

"You have to tell her. You have to _warn_ her."

"What?"

"If you can't stop it, you have to at least warn her. She's smart, she'll be able to figure out a way to protect herself."

"Yeah, because she's been doing a real _bang-up_ job of protecting herself so far this year." Sarcasm dripped from Draco's tongue like acid.

"Well, it'll at least give her more of a head start than being kidnapped and tortured and left in the dark will!"

Draco groaned. "Don't."

"Well, what do you want me to say? You didn't drag me out of bed at three A.M. to discuss the latest broomstick model, Malfoy."

"She'll know that I'm a… a..."

"What? That you're a Death Eater? Yeah, I'm sure that'll really shock her." Zabini rolled his eyes.

Draco found his face in his hands again, but conceded to Zabini's advice. "You're right. I know you're right."

"Of course I am." Zabini said seriously. There was another beat of silence.

"How the hell am I supposed to do this? She's going to be in the dungeons at Malfoy Manor by the end of the week if all goes to plan."

Zabini just shook his head and shrugged. "I don't know, mate. But figuring out a clever way might take more time than Granger's got right now."

* * *

Somehow Draco had ended up with the task of finding Granger at some point during the day when she was not flanked by Pothead and Weasel. This, Draco had found, was much easier said than done, particularly with Snape watching her every move, waiting for an opportunity also. Granger's schedule, as he paid closer attention, was ridiculously full, even for a top student. He must have looked incredibly odd to anybody who observed his behaviour; he was by any standard mildly stalking Hermione Granger. He never thought he'd sink so low. Although, he had to give himself credit that it would in fact be to save her life.

His first opening came just after their final class of the day, Herbology. She gathered her things, dropping a set of quills and ink all over the floor by mistake. Her bodyguards, believing her to be behind them, had wandered out of the classroom with the rest of the class.

He had no choice.

"Granger."

She looked up, her brown eyes wide with surprise. "Malfoy?" She asked cautiously. "What do you want?" She didn't say it as defensively as usual; she had been caught off-guard.

"I need to talk to you. Somewhere more private than this."

Granger's eyebrows pulled together in surprise and wariness. "Why?"

"I'll tell you that when we're not stood in an empty classroom where anyone in the school could see us and choose to eavesdrop."

"…Right." Granger moved with care, still confused. She led him to the storage room in the back. Thankfully, it was very roomy and bright, with the greenhouse roof stretching over them and enough room for all the class's supplies to be stocked neatly onto shelves. "Okay, what is it?"

"I don't know how to say… This is going to be difficult to hear." He said judiciously.

"Well, spit it out." Again, her tone was not harsh, but curious.

Draco took a deep breath. "You know what my dad is, and who he works for."

"Yes." She confirmed, gesturing for him to continue with her hand.

Draco struggled for words for the hundredth time that year, sighing exasperatedly. "I don't know how else to say this, if I'd had more time to prepare maybe I could have done it differently, but… They're coming for you."

Granger's eyes widened even further. "Who?"

He shot her a dark, meaningful look. "Them. My side. They're coming for you, and I don't think they intend to let you live."

"How do you…? Why did you tell me this?"

Draco couldn't honestly come up with an answer to her very valid question. He supposed it just seemed like too much; his Master expecting him to be complicit and silent in the torture and murder of his classmate in his own house.

"You needed to know." He said finally.

"Won't you get in trouble for this? Merlin, Malfoy, what will they do to you if they know that you warned me?" He instinctively placed a hand loosely over her mouth as her voice rose in horror. He definitively and inflexibly ignored the electric jolt that travelled up his arm from the touch. Disgust, that's all it was.

" _Yes_. Exactly. That's why you cannot tell anybody, you must remain completely and absolutely silent about this." His eyes flashed with the seriousness of the point he was making. He was entrusting his life to her in that moment; the girl he'd hated before he'd met her.

"Of course." He dropped his hand. She was already deep in thought. For a moment, he believed she actually might be able to think her way out of this impossible predicament. "But now, obviously, I have to go along with it." Her eyebrows were still furrowed.

"What? What on earth are you talking about? The whole point of my telling you was so you could avoid it! Why would you willingly walk into a _Death Eater trap_?" Draco hissed incredulously.

"Because if I run away now, they'll know someone told me! They'll know someone warned me and they'll come looking for whoever did it. I don't see an alternative to going along with it, I can't even think of a way out that doesn't mean they'll figure out that someone betrayed them. Besides, if I run, they'll only come after somebody else. My family, to get to me, or another of my friends as an alternative. I need to do this."

Draco had no words.

"Thank you for telling me this, Mal- er, Draco."

"You're welcome." His face showed no emotion.

"Wait here for five minutes, so that people won't put together that we've had this conversation." She turned away and placed a hand on the door handle, but at the last minute turned back to look at him. "You know… we seem to be getting into the habit of saving each other's lives, Malfoy." A small smile played on the edge of her lips. "It's probably not a healthy routine." And she closed the door behind her softly.

Draco had already heard by the next morning of the mysterious disappearance of Hermione Granger at some point in the dead of night.


	19. Open

Hermione knew what was coming. She felt the prickles on the back of her neck as Professor Snape held her back after dinner that same night to talk about her latest essay. He'd gone to the extent of being careful not to antagonise her even once in front of the class that day. Draco Malfoy's warning words to her that afternoon had been the edge she'd needed to be able to prepare, if only just a little. She had no plan past allowing them to take her so as not to hurt anyone else, and ensure her wand was not on her person; she knew they'd simply snap it in two if they found it.

She knew what was coming, but that didn't stop the pain of the Petrificus Totalus spell as it hit her squarely in the chest. She fell backwards across a table and landed head first on the cold stone floor. She was not unconscious, but thoroughly unable to move, nonetheless.

When the charm was finally removed from possession of her body, she found herself staring at a moist, cold stone ceiling. There was a quiet dripping emanating from the corner of the room somewhere. Her bare arms were flat against the freezing ground, sending chills deep into her bones.

Slowly, she raised her head off the floor. Her torso followed naturally, but she barely even noticed the fact that she was unhurt as she was completely overtaken by a fear of the unknown. What would happen to her now? Then she decided she would want to hold off on finding out their plan for her as long as possible.

Sitting up now, she wrapped her arms around her legs in front of her and placed her chin on her knees. And she waited.

* * *

Draco's first knowledge that the Gryffindor Princess had gone missing was the very next morning, when Dumbledore first made the announcement. Of course, the Boy-Who-Just-Wouldn't-Die and Weasel had been out combing the grounds for her all night after she'd failed to turn up for dinner the previous evening. They'd found her wand in her bag, on top of her bed, left there as if deliberately.

Now, he knew he'd have to do something to get her out of his own manor, under the nose of all the other Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself. He had already decided he wouldn't stand by and allow her to be murdered; since he'd gone to so much trouble to save her life over the last few months, it seemed an awful waste of his time to let her die now. At least, that's what he told himself repeatedly. In actuality, he had had too many a shared experience with her now for her death to mean nothing to him. He was the only one who'd seen the true extent of her pain – granted, it had been by accident – but he was just as lost as she was. If he'd been searching for a sign, there she'd been: a gigantic, depressed, glowing, know-it-all beacon. He'd been fighting the truth he'd known from the start; from that night forwards, their fates were tied. Therefore, he had the only two uncomfortable choices left to contend with.

Option one, he could admit to his most hated rivals that he was a follower of the Dark Lord, send the two of them to rescue her, and rely on them to keep their mouths shut about their newly acquired sensitive information. This would also mean trusting them not to harm his mother, or otherwise piss off the Death Eaters, remain undercover, and work out a clever enough plan to rescue Granger without getting them all killed, and all without the help of their only friend with brains.

Or option two, he could bite the bullet and rescue her himself in disguise, keeping valuable information out of dangerous hands and lessening the chances of his family being murdered as revenge. There was also the fact that he knew his own manor much better than they did – he'd spent many a childhood afternoon exploring the manor on his own. He hated to admit that one option sounded vastly more plausible and more difficult than the other.

 _Merlin-pissing-damn-it-all._

* * *

Two weeks later, the uproar at Granger's disappearance had died down very little. If anything, the rumours of her fate were getting more and more ludicrous. He'd just passed yet another third-year swapping theories with a rapt crowd ("I've heard that You-Know-Who has an army of dragons that he feeds muggleborns and muggles to") when he was suddenly and without warning yanked into a dark passage by his collar, a wand pressed directly to his forehead.

"Where – is – she?" Potter snarled through gritted teeth. Draco's befuddled silence seemed to only spur him on further. "Where's Hermione, you Death Eater scumbag? We know it was you!"

"She's been missing two weeks! You've had long enough, now tell us where the hell your lot are keeping her!" Weasley's voice even seemed less weasel-like than usual.

There was silence for a few more long seconds.

" _TELL US!"_ Potter's wand gave off red sparks which fizzled out on Draco's eyelashes, but Draco honestly did not know what to say.

"Harry." A calm female voice came from somewhere behind Potter and Weasley, but Draco couldn't tear his eyes away from Potter's feral ones to see who it belonged to. "Harry, stop." Potter lowered his wand a fraction but remained intent on Draco's face. Potter's arm was pulled back by the girl, whose hair Draco could not mistake for belonging to anybody but the youngest Weasley sibling.

As Potter was pulled away from him, Draco stayed as flat against the wall as possible, looking at the only rational group member.

"Draco," Ginny said, her voice controlled and even. "Please, tell us where she is?" Draco's mouth opened but still could not find words. "Please?" She asked again.

He finally said the only thing he could think to say. "She's not dead."

" _I KNEW IT – "_

" _YOU PIECE OF – "_

"Be quiet!" Ginny silenced them. "Go on." Her eyes were focused on his face.

"She's being held hostage." His eyes flickered between the three people in front of him.

"Do you know where?" Ginny asked, still calm.

Draco paused. "Yes."

"But you can't tell us?"

"No."

Ginny considered this while Weasley's fists balled up at his sides. "What's going to happen to her?" Ginny asked.

Draco looked at her meaningfully. "You already know what."

Ginny nodded. "Okay... Why?"

"She's a muggleborn."

"Obviously. More specifically?"

"She's Potter's best friend." He jerked his head in Scarhead's direction.

Ginny breathed deeply. "But she'd not dead yet?"

"No." Draco knew it would already be public knowledge if she was. She was the trigger.

"Was it you?" She asked.

"No!" Draco replied almost immediately.

Ginny narrowed her eyes, but not aggressively, as if she was trying to figure out a crossword. "You're not afraid of us." It wasn't a question. "So why are you telling us any of this?"

Draco paused again. "You know that, too."

Ginny nodded again. "You don't want her dead."

Draco's eyes flickered again to Potter and Weasley at her flanks, listening in fascinated silence now.

"No."

There was a moment of tense quiet, and then Ginny dropped her eyes, turning her head slightly towards her brother and Potter. "Come on." She said quietly. To Draco's intense surprise, they followed her, obviously deep in thought. Ginny Weasley had more influence over the two of those boneheads than anyone else in the entire school, Draco thought pensively. Hopefully it would be enough to keep the morons at bay until he'd gone to investigate himself.

* * *

That weekend, with rumours still swirling wildly, Draco Malfoy packed a bag ready for his weekend trip back home to 'check on his sick mother'. He'd left it until a bout of nasty flu had been spreading so as not to be conspicuous, but he'd received an odd look from Severus in the week, signalling that he was not as unaware as he was trying to appear. Thankfully, Severus was not privy to his true motives; Draco's Occlumency skills almost equalled Severus's.

That Friday evening, he journeyed home by Floo Powder from Professor Flitwick's office, with orders to be back at his fireplace at 6 o'clock sharp on Saturday evening. He'd have only a day to formulate a plan, to implement upon his return in a few weeks' time for the Easter Holidays.

"Draco!" His mother strode gracefully towards him, placing her hands lightly on his shoulders and brushing her cheek against his in her way of greeting. To anybody else, it would have looked like a pureblood mother greeting her son; aside from the fact that as her lips grazed his cheek, she whispered almost inaudibly. "They're here."

"Mother, how lovely to see you."

"Shall we retreat to the drawing room?"

"Of course." He followed behind her, nodding respectfully at each of the Dark Lord's followers that they passed. She closed the door quietly behind them but did not sit down before immediately casting a muffling charm over the room, and gathering him into a very unexpected hug.

"Draco… What are you doing home?" He saw the almost frantic concern in her eyes. "You should be at school!"

"I came back to see you, mother."

"For a true Slytherin boy, you could be better at lying, Draco, especially in such perilous times." Her tone was sharp, but her hands still rested on his shoulders. "This is about that classmate of yours, isn't it? The Mudblood?" Draco spluttered, finding himself unable to lie to his mother; particularly because she'd know anyway. "No, no, don't trouble yourself. I never wanted her here either. And I certainly need no more blood on my conscience, even blood as filthy as hers."

"What do you mean, Mother?"

"You needn't worry about it. He'll be back soon, and I'll tell him you returned to collect some books from our personal store for your mission. He always leaves before midnight to meet with another of his spies, so do not stray anywhere besides your bedroom or the library until then. I won't ask you what you are doing or why, just tell me how I can help, and for the love of all things sacred, _keep yourself safe_."

In another uncharacteristic Malfoy gesture, Draco pulled his mother back towards him into one more hug. " _Thank you._ "

* * *

That night, at a quarter past twelve, Draco crept down the stairs, to the entrance hall, and silently Confunded the cellar guard for the evening; the hapless Wormtail. He walked swiftly past him, into the darkened cellar.

"Granger." He whispered, barely more than a breath. "Granger?" He whispered a little louder, but there was still no response. "Oh, damn it – Hermione?" There was a sleepy whimper from the Northwest corner, furthest from the cellar bars.

" _Malfoy?_ " Her face showed confusion.

"Yes, keep your voice down." He wandered over to where her voice was coming from, and dimly lit one of the torches in the bracket on the wall, enough so they could see each other, but only vaguely be seen from the door. When he laid eyes on her, he almost started. She'd only been gone two weeks… how could she possibly be already so thin? Her cheekbones protruded from her face, and her wrists looked as if one twist might shatter them. He knew she'd been underweight before, but she'd clearly not been fed since they'd spoken last. He looked away from her, and called as quietly as possible, "Tinny!"

A loud crack sounded, and a tiny, brown house elf appeared in the cellar, her pointy nose flat against the cold stone floor in her bow. "Yes, Master?"

"Some sandwiches, please. And bring them on foot. We don't need anyone coming to investigate the sounds."

She hurried out of the cellar on foot.

"You really should be nicer to them, you know." Her voice, though weak, was disapproving. He almost laughed. She hadn't changed at all, despite her status as Death Eater prisoner.

Within a few seconds, Tinny had returned with a towering silver platter of different kinds of sandwiches.

"Thank you, Tinny." He glanced at Granger's judgemental stare. "Er, help yourself to extra helpings of food tomorrow if you want to."

Tinny recited a long stream of gratitude that followed her as she bowed repeatedly out of the door.

" _Muffliato_." He waved his wand and sat down across from her. He shoved the platter across the floor towards her. "Eat, you're starving." She eyed them warily. "They're not poisoned, and you look like you're about to keel over, eat."

She cautiously took a sandwich and began to chew.

"So you're here." She said, her voice croaky.

"That's obvious."

"And you're looking after me."

"Again, obvious."

"And you warned me about their plans."

"None of these are particularly mentally challenging remarks, Granger."

"I'm trying to get my head around it."

"Well, if the great _Hermione Granger_ doesn't understand it…"

"No, I don't." She said, bluntly. Her brown eyes burned just as bright as always through her wasted appearance. Her spirit had definitely not been broken; if anything, she looked more resilient than he'd ever seen her. "So talk."

"About what?"

She lowered her half-eaten sandwich to stare at him pointedly. "You _know_ what. I'm tired of this, so will you please stop speaking in riddles? This has gone far enough. Tell me everything. From the beginning. _What is going on_ , _Draco Malfoy?"_

She was right. He knew this was going to go horribly wrong from here, but to be perfectly honest, he'd reached his breaking point. As long as his mother was safe, he didn't care anymore. He breathed in and out deeply, and begun to speak.

"You worked out most of it yourself already. You worked out that I'm a Death Eater. They don't call you the cleverest with of her age for nothing – and don't you dare let that go to your head. At the start of the year, he gave me a mission. I guess he was using me as revenge against my father, or maybe just to set an example of what happens when people break rules. Their families suffer. Either way, he gave me a near impossible task; to find a way into the school for the rest of them. And to… to murder Albus Dumbledore. He threatened my mother's life and mine. I been tried every night for weeks to find a weak link in the security of the school, but it seemed so impossible! Then I remembered an artefact I'd once seen in Borgin and Burke's; a Vanishing Cabinet. Borgin told me there was a second one up in the school, in the Room of Requirement, that very few people knew about, hadn't been used since Grindelwald's reign of terror. So, I started fixing it. In November, I was coming back from the Room of Requirement, going to bed and I saw you run up towards the astronomy tower. I followed you. You know what happened."

"You stopped me."

Draco paused to absorb the truth of the information for the first time. "Yeah. I did. I didn't know why, I still don't. You've no idea how it tormented me. Why had I, pureblood Death Eater Draco Malfoy stopped Potter's best friend, the Mudblood Hermione Granger from killing herself? I couldn't explain my own actions, let alone justify them. But from then on, I knew I had to take that secret to my grave. I thought I was safe because you hadn't seen my face, but somehow you figured it out…" He trailed off, but carried on quickly. "The mission was my number one priority, and if you happened to decide to run your mouth, my family… they would be…" He knew she understood.

"So instead I kept a closer eye on you, went and got you again when Goyle lost his temper and dumped you in the forest, and just kept watching. But," - an edge of amused frustration crept into his tone now - "you just got more and more difficult to understand. You confused me to no end, your words and actions never aligned; you'd say one thing and do another, constantly. You _still_ confuse me." He ran a hand through the hair flopping over into his eyes. "And then, the Dark Lord assigned another mission. To Snape. To take you hostage and end your life when the time came."

She just nodded, as calm as if they were discussing Quidditch scores over afternoon tea.

"Well, after all that effort spent to keep you alive and quiet, it seemed a wasted effort to just allow you to die then. Easier, but impossible, does that make sense?"

Hermione said nothing.

"If you tell anybody about any of this, I'll kill you myself, but…" His threat was harsh, but empty. He sighed. "The truth is, I've been just as lost as you for a long, long time. When I followed you that night, much as I wanted to taunt you and make it worse for you, I understood. And I hated myself for it. I hated you for it. Now, I'm… kind of grateful. The one person who could possibly understand. I just feel so… I just feel like…"

"Like you're being suffocated alive by your own pretences?" She finished gently.

They looked at each other for a long moment, before Hermione's lips raised in a slight smile.

"It was Harry, you know." He looked at her confusedly. "Harry worked it out. He has a kind of map, and it shows where people are in the castle. It can't be tricked or lied to. Harry had been watching you for months, disappearing off the map, he was so sure you were up to no good. I guess he was right. But that night he saw my name on the astronomy tower, and right next to mine, yours. You confused me, too."

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while whilst Hermione continued eating the sandwiches.

"So, did it work, then?" She finally said.

"What?"

"Did you fix it? The cabinet?"

Draco huffed a little laugh in reminder. "Yeah. Actually, you helped me. When you told me about the origins of the Evanesco charm, it just clicked. Somebody had tried to vanish Hag's Tears and Bloodroot at the same time and created a – what was it you called it? – a wormhole in the cabinet. I erased the faulty path and created a new one, but it took some time to work out how to do it."

"I'm not surprised! That's very advanced magic, Malfoy." She couldn't keep the note of appreciation out of her voice.

"But I won't tell the Dark Lord until I've got you out of here."

Hermione froze. "You're getting me out?"

"Obviously. Why did you think I was here? To enjoy the scenery?" He looked disdainfully at the sunken, damp walls.

She didn't even seem to realise she'd dropped the half-eaten sandwich she'd been holding. For the second time that day, Draco had been grabbed in a surprise hug. She, shorter than him by almost a foot, held him tightly about the neck, her face buried in his shoulder.

" _Oh._ "

Even more surprising, he thought, was that his arms had moved without his conscious knowledge to wrap around her, too.

And he really, really hoped she couldn't feel his heart thumping through his robes right now.


	20. Brave

Hermione didn't know how long she'd been sat unmoving in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor, but the freezing stone tiles beneath where she sat no longer felt cold, and the bare skin of her arms felt numb with lack of use. She'd guessed between two and three weeks, based on the timings of the changeover of the Death Eaters guarding her prison. Only a few days previously had Draco Malfoy snuck in past Wormtail to see her, to let her know she would not be left here indefinitely, waiting on her own personal death row. He'd said he was coming back for her, but she did not know when, and had been too afraid at the time to ask. Terrified it would all turn out to be one huge joke on his part. She wouldn't let herself get her hopes up.

So she sat. The second that Malfoy had stood to leave, taking the tray of sandwiches with him, she'd grabbed hold of a half-dozen of them, stuffing them quickly into a sheltered crevice in the wall. She knew she wouldn't be fed again until the next morning, and then only a half-bowl of some kind of gruel. But those life-preserving supplies had run dry that morning, and with nothing to do but think about her withered stomach, weakened muscles and haggard clothing, she'd fallen quickly into longing for something to eat. Thankfully, You-Know-Who's orders had specifically included water, so she hadn't yet fallen into the grasp of dehydration. But her body, long abused by self-inflicted malnutrition anyway, was not handling the restrictions well.

She had almost fallen into yet another nightmarish sleep at a time she was positive was not night-time when she heard the man who was supposed to be guarding her slump to the floor. It had been almost silent, but Hermione's ears were now well-attuned to the quiet, and the disturbance of it seemed comparably deafening. She knew who it would be before he stepped into the dull light, but she had her arms halfway-up defensively instinctually. The white-blonde hair caught the candlelight before his face did, and she breathed an inaudible sigh of relief before relaxing her position.

"Careful Granger, you could have taken my eye out with those daggers you were glaring." Hermione never thought that in a million years she'd ever miss his drawling, sarcastic tone, and yet here she was.

"Well, it's not like I have a wide variety of other weapons in my arsenal currently," she stated dryly. She was inexplicably embarrassed by how weak and tired her own voice sounded. It was so unnatural to be so defenceless, particularly around Malfoy. She felt naked and vulnerable without her wand, and her body was so emaciated it was hardly likely she'd be able to defend herself physically.

He stepped forward again, suddenly intent on her face and clothes.

"Merlin… Have they been feeding you at _all_?"

"Oh, yes, my prison guards have been _such_ gracious hosts. Five star accommodation, I must say." She allowed the acid to creep into her voice, but found she didn't have the energy to snap any further. Really, after standing only for a few minutes she needed to sit down.

It was a testament to how weak she must have looked that he didn't even try to retaliate as he watched her take her preferred spot on the floor.

"Tinny." Malfoy whispered. The answering _crack_ was almost ear-piercing. "More sandwiches please. And on foot again. No noise." Hermione's accusing stare bored into the side of his face. "And once you've finished, er- please enjoy some more of the food in the kitchen."

"I thought you were here to get me out?" Hermione's voice was so small once Tinny had left the room, padding her way towards the kitchen that Malfoy looked at her intently again. Hermione didn't really know what he was looking for, but he clearly didn't find it, because he came and slid down the wall about two feet away from her, staring at the adjacent stones.

"I am getting you out. Tonight." She creased her eyebrows in confusion. He didn't seem particularly raring to go with a plan in motion. "I'm just trying to prepare. Mentally, I mean. If I do this, there's no going back." Hermione stayed silent, watching him tentatively. He swallowed convulsively. "Once this is done, it's done. I can never come home. I… I mean… My mother…"

"We can protect her. The Order can. If you're with us, we will keep her safe from them."

"Can you keep her safe from my father?" He challenged. "If she wants to go to him, what will you do then? My father will never join the Order, but my mother will never be safe with me going against the Dark Lord. What will your precious Order do then?" He didn't say it with any venom, almost like he was truly asking for an answer.

"We won't stop her from going, if that's what she wants." Hermione said simply. Draco would be able to translate that easily enough. They couldn't protect who doesn't want protecting. They wouldn't take away her free will, even if it meant her choosing to die. It would be up to Draco to convince her to stay under the protection of the Order.

"My home. My family. My… my whole life. That's what I'm losing."

He'd dropped his head to his knees dejectedly. Hermione was suddenly overwhelmed by him. Of exactly how much he was giving up, throwing away, to even be sat with her right now, talking so openly. His talk of running away from not just his family, but everything he knew, his entire life and mentality. Of course, it wasn't solely for her benefit; she knew there was a part of him that, deep down, knew right from wrong in a way he'd never been taught. He wouldn't be so conflicted now if he truly believed in the Death Eaters' order of things.

But this… This really was so much to lose.

The last time he'd opened up, Hermione had surprised herself just as much as she'd surprised him with that impromptu embrace. This time was different. Hermione placed her hand over his on the damp rock floor deliberately, without looking him in the eye. Considered as it might have been, she was still surprised when he didn't pull his hand away. And she said nothing when, after a few moments, he turned his palm towards the ceiling and held her fingers there. The warmth of his hands was comforting on her cold, bony fingers. And somehow, she thought she was probably comforting him, too.

The two sat wordlessly holding hands for a long time, not looking at each other, thinking about what was to come.

* * *

After what seemed like a couple of hours, Draco stood, stretching his dead legs out and shaking away the pins and needles. If he was going to do this, he needed to do it now, before he talked himself out of it again.

He turned and looked at the girl who'd consumed so much of his waking mind since the previous November. There, crouched against the walls of his dungeon, so starved and small, her chocolate eyes so large in her face it would have looked comical if it hadn't looked so terrifying, he felt he'd truly connected. He looked at her face, as if seeing it for the first time. Those huge eyes, so often narrowed in distaste or concentration, so aware, were flecked with a golden undertone in the candlelight. He noticed her nose, dropping gently down her face and curving just the littlest bit at the end. A smattering of freckles across only the bridge. Her lips, not pushed out unnaturally past her large front teeth anymore, were full, and bowed naturally to the shape of her jaw. Like an electric shock down his spine, he finally registered that, behind the unassailable moral compass and the sharp tongue and the intimidating brain that preceded her physical appearance, she was beautiful.

More slowly, he realised that for the first time, probably ever, somebody actually knew him. This girl, this vulnerable, intelligent, sarcastic girl had seen the fleeing coward, the ignorant bully, the cruel streak, and didn't flinch away, chose to look deeper. She'd chosen to see more than the stupid, prejudiced boy who'd taunted her relentlessly for six years, and she'd chosen to put her trust in him.

Right then he knew there was nothing he'd ever done in his whole life that had granted the amount of trust that this girl had shown him. Even saving her life.

Now he must do the only thing he could for her.

"Get some sleep. I'll come back for you in a few hours."

* * *

He made a rather big show of leaving that night, clunking his bag down the stairs, saying a longer goodbye to his mother than was strictly necessary, and putting slightly too much floo powder into the fireplace in order to leave ash marks on the grate. As he'd hugged his mother, he'd almost imperceptibly told her to make sure the drawing room was empty at twelve minutes past eleven that evening – it would take him so long to send word to the Headmaster that is mother's 'illness' had worsened considerably and he was needed immediately at home. Dumbledore would connect the Slytherin common room fireplace to the floo network again, and after that he'd have to apparate, without a license, back to Hogsmeade with Hermione. The Headmaster would no doubt be suspicious should one person leave the school and two people re-enter, and this situation would without question need explaining.

Not to mention that the second he left the Manor with Hermione, he would become a traitor, a prisoner of war if caught, or simply executed on sight by Death Eaters. He would need the immediate and total protection of the Order of the Phoenix if he wanted to live past the age of sixteen. He simply knew too much, and was too close to the Dark Lord. Severus Snape, for example. Draco knew that as soon as he reached the school, he would need to destroy his own godfather's life for the sake of survival, tell Dumbledore of his double act, and get Snape kept away from himself and Hermione at all costs.

That night, as he wrote the note that would set into motion the most flat out dangerous thing he'd done so far – which really was saying something at this point in the game – and dressed in his darkest, most protective clothing, he steeled himself. He would not feel again until this was over. Until he was sat in the Headmaster's office, when it was all over, and they'd both survived, he would not feel. He would be cold and callous. He would do what he needed to do to survive.

The fire he knelt beside suddenly lit up green. Dumbledore had granted him an entrance. He stepped onto the hearth in his Manor. He quickly passed through the drawing room, mercifully as empty as he'd requested, without making any sound. All those hours of sneaking around Hogwarts after curfew had given him a light tread and a hunter's senses. His wand was clutched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles stuck out, white against the skin.

Firstly, he moved to his room, grabbing a small bag and stuffing some clothes in. Thankfully, he'd thought to bring most of his clothes to Hogwarts with him at the beginning of the year. A few personal possessions, books, and a hooded cloak later, he was out of the door again.

The sound of familiar voices caught his attention as he passed the dining room. He leaned in, taking a small, tentative glance through the door stood ajar.

And suddenly his blood ran cold. His heart thumped unevenly behind his ribcage. His knees might have given out had his natural instinct not been to stay completely still, like he was in the presence of a particularly venomous, angry snake. He almost was.

The Dark Lord had returned early. And he was currently hosting an inner circle Death Eater meeting in the dining room, not a hundred metres from where Draco was going to turn traitor. He had to act now, while they were distracted. He'd never get a chance like this again; the minute that meeting drew to a close, any plans he had to get Hermione out would have failed. They would be trapped. They would be dead.

Time wasted was lethal. He almost ran, but stopped himself in time to remain silent. Peering over the side of the railing, Draco saw Rowle sat at the bottom of the steps to the dungeon, looking as if he was about to drop off to sleep. Good.

" _Stupefy_!" Draco whispered. Rowle simply slumped to the ground as if he'd really just nodded off. He didn't bother to move the huge unconscious body. The bars slid open without so much as a groan, and he quickly lit the only candle in the room with his wand, to find Hermione just stirring underneath it.

"Come on! We have to go now. _Right_ now!" He whispered urgently, pulling her to her feet by her arm, but she was instantly alert. She asked no questions. He ghosted back up the steps, and had almost made a break for it right then, but turned to make sure Hermione was following. His eyebrows pulled together.

Immediately he knew something was wrong. Just the small effort to climb the steps had dizzied Hermione; she had gripped his sleeve as she tried to stay upright. She was white, sweating, and quite clearly about to collapse to her knees. She was too weak to run, let alone fight.

Cold, calculating Draco fell away in lieu of an angry version. He cursed every single Death Eater he could think of under his breath, but she barely even noticed, too concentrated on keeping from blacking out. In two seconds he'd make the decision. He had no physical choice but to carry her. At least she was now light enough that he could manage the short distance from the dungeon to the front gate while running.

He reached his right arm down behind her knees, and held her back with his left. As if by instinct trying to make herself an easier passenger despite her lack of full consciousness, she automatically locked her hands behind his neck. It alleviated some of the weight, and Draco adjusted to the stance not a second too soon. He was instantly, ecstatically happy he'd chosen to wear a large cloak with a hood when the first Death Eaters rounded the corner. They were out of time.

He took off running as shouts echoed in the otherwise quiet Manor, but Draco wasn't listening. Death Eaters had blocked his first option for a way out, but Draco knew this Manor better than anyone else. It barely set him back as he spun a hundred and eighty degrees and bolted towards the Manor gardens instead. The crunch of gravel under his boots was welcoming. His feet skidded around the first corner just as four different spells exploded the brick wall behind him, but he didn't stop. At least five hooded figures rounded the corner three seconds later, and knew he could not, would not stop until he reached the barrier. The maze of evergreen bushes his mother had grown years ago provided decent coverage for him as he wove in and out and between the foliage to get to the end.

He could see it now. He knew exactly where the barrier would be, and he pushed his protesting legs faster, faster, faster. Thirty metres. His pursuers were faster than him, unburdened with an almost lifeless body to carry as he was, but these were his gardens. He ducked behind another wall as spells aimed at his back missed only by inches. He didn't even slow.

Twenty metres. The footsteps of the Death Eaters behind him fell back, and it caught his attention; they had been catching up to him. They would not stop without reason. A prickle on the back of his neck told him to duck before he really knew what was coming. Green light flashed over his head without warning and hit the grass ahead of him. He knew who was following him now. The Dark Lord was aiming to kill.

Ten metres. As he left the shelter of artfully placed bushes and walls behind him, he fell into a flat out sprint, aware only of the person in his arms and the point of space past the barrier he was fixated on. Faster.

Five metres. He could not outrun them anymore. He felt a hand close on his cloak at the exact second he passed through the barrier, as if someone had just slipped ice down his back. He heard the intake of breath, too close, as the taker prepared to cast the final spell.

He turned on the spot into suffocating darkness.

* * *

The _crack_ reverberated off of the windows of the Hogsmeade buildings at midnight, but all surrounding occupants were too deeply asleep to notice or too tired to care. Hermione, having all but passed out for the last couple of minutes, was only aware once again after the cool night air of Hogsmeade had hit her face. Draco, pink faced and utterly breathless, set her on her feet at her request. The adrenaline coursed through both her veins and his, the heat of the chase fresh and immediate. She was in a stupor at their incredible luck. They hadn't been followed.

All it took was his short, disbelieving, hysterical laugh. That did it. The thrill, fear, joy, adrenaline, overwhelmed each and every one of Hermione's better senses.

She pressed her lips against his with more fervour than she thought possible given her weakened state. Her arms wrapped behind his neck again, and she melted into pure emotion without her brain's consent. She was lost, but not at all unhappy. Not unhappy in the slightest.

Until his still-rapid breathing brought her back to herself. Mortified, she released his lips from hers, pulling her arms back, her cheeks blazing with embarrassment.

"I'm so s-"

But he stepped unexpectedly towards her, pulling her lips back to his, wrapping her closer, and holding her there. His lips, motionless with shock before, moved now, surprisingly gently against hers, but with an undeniable underlying elation. Her arms enfolded him again, her fingers tangled in the hair at the scruff of his neck. He was unfamiliar, but warmer and more tender than she would ever have guessed. She balanced unsteadily on her tiptoes to reach him, but his hands at her waist secured her. He made sure she would not fall away from him.

They were both happily lost tonight.


	21. Together

_**1 Month Later**_

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were huddled around the lake near the Forest, sprawled across the grass as they stared up at the looming visage of Hogwarts in the sunlight. In the shade of the trees they sat in near silence, just the sounds of a summer evening floating in the air. Harry, as he so often did since Dumbledore's death, clutched the fake locket in his fist. Hermione, though thin and pale from grief, was back to a mostly healthy weight since her time at Malfoy Manor.

"I don't want to leave." Hermione admitted softly, her words hanging in the air.

"Me either. It really feels like we're not coming back, doesn't it?" Ron said sadly.

"Even if Hogwarts does open again next year, I'm not coming back." Harry spoke for the first time in hours. "Dumbledore left me just enough to tell me what I need to do now. I can't ignore that."

"Where to first?" Hermione asked, lightening the mood a little.

"I was thinking of going to Godric's Hollow. My old home, my parents are buried there. And then I'm going to look for the Horcruxes, like Dumbledore wanted." Harry's eyes followed the locket as his fingers played with the chain.

"We're going to need a decent tent and a lot of clothes." Ron said.

"And enough reference books that we won't have to stop for a while." Hermione added.

"What?"

Ron scoffed. "Well, you didn't honestly think we'd let you go on your own, did you?"

"But-"

"Harry, we knew from the minute you stopped You-Know-Who in first year there was no turning back. Do you really think in all this time we've never considered the consequences of being close to you?" Hermione smiled without humour. "We're coming with you, Harry."

Harry took a deep breath. He frowned. "We'll talk about it after my last stay with the Dursleys."

"We can talk about it at the wedding." At Harry's blank look, Ron continued. "Bill and Fleur's? You have to be there, Mum will want the chance to feed you up properly before you go." Harry half-smiled, and they knew they had won.

They had sat for no more than ten minutes more when Pigwidgeon swooped clumsily towards them, pulled off balance by the long newspaper curled into his claws. He dropped the package unceremoniously on Hermione's lap and flapped awkwardly to sit on Ron's shoulder.

"No letters today?" Harry said suspiciously. Ron was suddenly very interested in feeding Pigwidgeon the leftover crumbs in the pocket of his robes.

"Well, it _is_ departure day, he's just giving me some time to pack." Hermione flushed.

"He should know you better than to think you didn't pack everything three days ago." Harry levelled. Hermione busied herself with unrolling the newspaper. The truth was, it was unusual for Draco not to have written her a letter. They'd been writing every day since he'd been placed in Grimmauld Place for his own protection. He was nearly as unsettled there as Sirius had been, restless and itching to do something productive. Him not writing meant he had something else to do, and that worried Hermione.

They'd been using Pigwidgeon to keep in contact, since he's small and easy to miss, and that seemed to be the extent of Ron's blessing towards them. He was only outwardly less antagonistic towards the Slytherin, and Hermione was under no illusion that Draco switching sides would change that. Harry, on the other hand, was wary, but slightly more forgiving and understanding.

Thankfully, Hermione had received a letter a week ago telling her that he would be attending the wedding also, under the disguise of a waiter, and that seemed to have settled Draco's incessant boredom a little. Only a couple more weeks until he would be leaving the safe house and the tedium would subside.

Hermione didn't bother to read the front page article of the _Daily Prophet_ Pigwidgeon had delivered, the moving picture of the five smiling people, two of them only children, was enough to know it was yet another obituary. She didn't need to know the names of the family who were no more. She flipped straight to the third page, where she abruptly froze. Lucius Malfoy's colourless eyes and haughty expression stared up at her from the paper. Her heart squeezed uncomfortably in her chest.

 _Malfoy Found Dead in Own Manor, Foul Play Suspected,_ the title read.

 _Lucius Malfoy, famously wealthy political figure, was found dead in his home last night, with indications of foul play around the Manor. Mr Malfoy, also a known member of the inner circle of You-Know-Who's followers, has been becoming more reclusive in recent months, and following an anonymous tip off, Aurors broke into the Manor yesterday evening, where they made the discovery. It is not known at this time whether his wife, Narcissa, or their son, Draco, are involved, but they are the primary suspects. Neither Mrs Malfoy nor Draco have resurfaced and it is believed at this time that they are evading Auror intervention._

 _To read about the elusive Lucius Malfoy's great successes and crippling failures, turn to page 13…_

"Hermione?" Harry waved his hand in front of her face.

"Sorry," she whispered. She cleared her throat and spoke a little louder. "Lucius Malfoy's dead."

Harry and Ron looked at her without surprise. They couldn't truthfully say they felt any remorse, especially given Lucius's involvement in Sirius's death, but all of them were aware that it might have affected Draco a lot differently.

"At least his mum's not been caught." Ron said, his voice devoid of inflection as he read the piece himself.

"Yeah," Hermione agreed. "He was much closer to his mother."

"So Voldemort's killing his own people now, is he?" Harry said brashly. "I suppose he didn't have a choice. But I don't see why he didn't just kill him straight away. Why wait a month after his son betrayed them to kill him?"

Hermione shuddered. "Torture?" She said in a small voice. Even the mental image of the Manor that had been conjured by the reading of the article had made her feel a bit green. She remembered those days all too well.

"Nah." Ron casually corrected them, aware that Hermione's mind was going to darker places. "He just wanted information. You-Know-Who kept him alive to tell him where his family were, but Lucius wouldn't know. Once they figured that out, they killed him."

The three lapsed into silence once again.

"We really do only have one choice, don't we?" Hermione spoke, swatting flyaway hair out of her face. She looked at her friends.

"Yeah. We really do." Harry clasped the locket tightly once again.

* * *

Draco stared bleakly out of the third floor landing window of 12 Grimmauld Place, his purgatory, at the dull grey pavement below. Two cars passed by obliviously while his gaze slipped out of focus in the drizzle. He'd received the news about his father yesterday evening. To his surprise, any grief he felt towards Lucius's passing hadn't actually hit him yet. He and his father were never very close. He didn't particularly feel any sense of loss, but Draco justified that to himself with his father's actions over the previous years, the most pivotal years in his development as an individual. His father had given him everything he could have wanted growing up, as long as he followed the rules. And when he had become a teenager, his father had instilled in Draco a deep sense of morals, and then flaunted his blatant lack of his own in his face. Draco, though confused, believed that the only person his father had ever felt true love for was his mother, Narcissa.

Draco was not grieving, he decided. He was simply saddened for his mother's sake.

He wondered if Hermione, tucked away safely on the Hogwarts Express back to London right now, had heard the news yet. He wondered if she had felt happy, or if she had been sad for him. Maybe she hadn't felt anything at all. He wouldn't blame her.

A knock on the door downstairs started the painting of what Draco assumed was a hag screaming in the hallway once more, making him jump. The piercing sound reverberated through the empty house eerily. Thankful for the distraction, Draco raced downstairs towards the door two steps at a time. The door was already opening when Draco got to the last flight of stairs.

"Hello!" A chirpy voice sounded. "We're here to rescue you!" He laid eyes on the pink-haired, pale faced image of his cousin.

"Nymphadora?"

"Tonks." She said flatly, her hair tinting redder, before returning to its original shade. "Get your things, let's go!"

* * *

Molly Weasley stood at the kitchen sink, pretending to wash a sparkling-clean plate, while staring worriedly out of the magically patched up window. Ginny, her red hair pulled behind her ears in focus, had her hand on her mother's shoulder, her face carved out of stone. Draco stood a ways behind them, trying to look as if he wasn't glancing at them every few seconds. He did not feel unwelcome, but the only person he truly risked losing tonight was Hermione. Almost all of the Weasley family was out there somewhere in the pitch black; All stood an equal risk of losing their lives. It seemed disrespectful to share in the two Weasley women's worries.

Potter's rescue party was late.

A small, red-rusted oil can had appeared in the front yard where they were all staring eight minutes ago. Three minutes ago, a battered plimsoll had materialised next to it. Each time the Portkeys had come back not bearing people had made the tension agonising. The youngest Weasel and his cousin Tonks were supposed to have been the first back, and their lack of appearance had signified that something had gone wrong. When one of the twins and the Weasley father had failed to show up also, they knew the scale of the problem. The longer they waited, the less likely it was that everyone had survived.

Suddenly, a blue light had become visible in the dim moonlight on the lawn. Ginny's third unnecessary shout of "MUM!" became strangled as they realised this one contained more than just rubbish. All three bolted for the door and burst onto the yard, and Draco's stomach clenched. Abruptly, Potter and the half-giant Hagrid, holding an old hairbrush, collapsed on the lawn. Ginny gave off an odd choking sound and grabbed Harry around the neck in a bone-cracking hug.

"Harry? You are the real Harry? What happened? Where are the others?" Mrs Weasley was tripping over her words in angst.

Potter looked just as lost as ever. "What d'you mean? Isn't anyone else back?" Realisation dawned on him, and his face paled further. "The Death Eaters were waiting for us. We were surrounded the moment we took off – they knew it was tonight – I don't know what happened to anyone else. Four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort caught up with us–"

He cut off. Draco's heart was in his throat. After everything that had happened, it could still be his fate to lose everything tonight. He may already have lost everything. He wished he could ask Potter about her, ask if he saw anything at all of her after they took off, but he was afraid of the answer.

"Thank goodness you're alright." Molly pulled had pulled Potter into a tight, warm hug.

Draco remembered what that had felt like when he had arrived at the Burrow a week earlier. He had expected to be treated like a war criminal, like an outcast. But the minute he'd arrived with nothing but his Hogwarts trunk to call his own, Molly Weasley had held out her arms and hugged him. She'd lied to him gently that she was sorry to hear about his father. She'd thanked him for what he'd done for Hermione. She'd given him a room to stay in and some breakfast. Draco had never felt so quickly accepted in his life. The matriarch of the Weasleys had accepted him into her home and her life, and that was that. Everybody else seemed to just follow suit.

Molly hurried back towards the large warped house to fetch alcohol for Hagrid, and Draco turned to follow suit and wait for the next Portkey to arrive. He heard Ginny quietly telling Harry which of his friends were still missing and decided this was a private moment between them, until Ginny's next cry of "Mum!"

Draco spun on his heels so fast it made his head spin a little.

More slowly this time, two figures materialised on the grass, one the strong but scarred ex-teacher Remus Lupin, the other an unconscious Weasley twin with blood pouring across his face. He heard Molly use an oath he never thought could come out of her mouth.

Potter had run forward to grab the twin's legs and carry him towards the house, and Draco, feeling like there was more he could do, hurried to support the twin's other side. No sooner had they placed him gently onto the couch in the front room had Mrs Weasley bent over him, trying to examine his face. They were horrified; George's ear was missing. Draco watched as Lupin grabbed Potter's arm and pulled him into the kitchen roughly. Draco decided that was a confrontation he could miss.

He stared down at the injured young man, wondering where the hell Hermione could possibly be, his jaw tense at the thought of something happening to her, while he stood there at the Burrow, useless. Suddenly, he couldn't stand not doing anything anymore, and he crouched down next to the couch.

"Mrs Weasley, is there anything I can do to help?" He asked unobtrusively. The looks people exchanged over his head did not go unnoticed by him.

"I don't think we'll be able to grow his ear back," She wiped tears away with the sleeve of her robe impatiently. "It's been cursed off. But the bleeding is the bigger problem. Here." She held the tip of her wand at her son's elbow and whispered a spell to herself. She handed her wand to Draco. "Hold this. It's a blood replenishing spell. I'll go and find some rags and one of my healing spell books."

He held the wand steady and kept his eyes on the injured Weasley until she returned a minute later.

"Thank you." She took her wand back, and Draco stood up again, allowing Molly the space she needed to work. Ginny took over at her side.

Another blue light in the garden immediately demanded his attention, and he was out of the door before consciously deciding to be there, closely followed by Lupin and Potter, who had come out of the kitchen looking shameful and tense. The light grew stronger, and suddenly Hermione and Kingsley Shacklebolt appeared in the dark, clutching a wire clothes hanger tightly. Draco's heart squeezed and then sunk to the floor. Without thinking, he wrapped his arms tightly around Hermione's waist as she hugged his throat. Her face was buried in his neck, and she was standing on tiptoe trying to keep her feet on the ground as he hugged her. He physically felt the tension in his chest relax when he held her.

He barely heard the conversation occurring behind him, but reluctantly released her to allow her to see Potter.

"Who else is back?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Only Lupin, Hagrid, George and me." Harry said, and Hermione choked a deep breath in.

"George is hurt. He lost an ear, but otherwise, everyone's fine." Draco told her. He resisted the urge to grab her again in relief, but wound his fingers tight with hers, anyway.

"He _lost_ an _ear_?" Hermione repeated.

"But he's alive. Snape always was good at _Sectumsempra_. He lost his hood during the chase." Lupin chimed in. Draco's ears perked at the sound of his godfather's name. Draco glanced at Potter, who was red faced in anger, and he seemed beyond words.

Just then, before any of them could react further, the next Portkey arrived, carrying Arthur Weasley and the other twin.

Lupin wasted no time. "George was hurt, he's in the house."

All except Draco, Hermione and Potter retreated into the house to tend to George. The three left sat tersely on the garden steps, waiting in the quiet for the next Portkey to appear. Ginny joined them soon after, subtly taking Potter's hand. _Huh_ , Draco thought. He hadn't known that was a thing.

"It should have been Ron and Tonks first." Hermione spoke almost inaudibly. "They were the closest." Draco squeezed her hand, but he had no words to comfort her with.

All of a sudden, a broom appeared in the sky above them, carrying two figures, streaking towards the ground.

"It's them!" Hermione cried, bringing Lupin back out of the door.

Tonks's broom landed in a sharp skid on the muddy ground, Ron gripping her shoulders for dear life, before Tonks clumsily threw herself into Lupin's arms. Lupin's face was white and rigid, and he was utterly speechless. There were more tears, greetings from Molly and relief sounded thick in the air as they recounted their own stories.

"So are we the last back?" Ron asked.

"We're still waiting for Bill and Fleur, and Mad-Eye and Mundungus." Ginny filled him in.

Time seemed to pass quickly for Draco after that; the oldest Weasley brother, Bill, and Fleur Delacour arrived shortly after Ron and Tonks had, bearing the shocking news of Mad-Eye Moody's death at the hands of the Death Eaters and Mundungus subsequently fleeing, which surprised nobody. After the quiet toast in the Weasley's front room in honour of Mad-Eye's memory, Potter, Weasley, Hermione, and Draco all retreated into Ron's room to settle and talk in private.

"I was hoping to wait a little bit to talk about this. Hear all about the wedding and then ease into talking about… everything else afterwards." Harry started once everyone seemed comfortably perched on the floor, the bed, or the chest of drawers. "But Mad-Eye dying… well, it's made me realise that we don't have time to waste on this, so here goes."

Ron was silent and slightly huffy, and Hermione seemed to find this oddly suspicious. "What?" She said. When no one responded, she continued. "Have you been keeping something from me?" She demanded.

"Hear me out!" Harry said pleadingly, twisting his wand between his fingers thoughtfully. She relented. "Right, so… Ron and I have been talking a lot. Essentially, we think that… well, I think that given the circumstances…" He glanced at Draco. "Malfoy might be able to help us with our _search_." He sent Hermione a meaningful look.

"For what?" Draco asked doubtfully, when no one elaborated.

" _Shh_ … Really?" Hermione thought to herself, looking very much as if she was calculating the mental maths of this revelation. There were a few seconds in which she was silent. Slowly, she spoke again. "That… Makes sense."

Weasley looked immediately outraged, as if he'd been banking on Hermione having a problem with it. Whatever the hell _it_ was. Draco revelled in Weasley's disappointment regardless.

"Well, good. I think so, too. I'll… er… leave you to talk about it with him." Harry stood up from the bed, not so subtly gesturing for Ron to leave the room first.

"I'm not leaving them alone in my bedroom!" He protested. Hermione fixed him a look with her eyes. "Fine. I'll be back in ten minutes. _Ten minutes_." He left, with a very surly glance back towards them.

Hermione took Draco's hand after the door closed. They sat only a foot apart on the floor now, and Draco quickly realised that this was the first time they'd actually been alone together since that critical night in Hogsmeade. She was about to speak, but just then, the full force of how much he'd missed her hit him, and without thinking about it, he leant towards her, holding her cheek gently, and kissed her.

As she responded, the kiss was deeper, more urgent, reacting to the adrenaline and tension of the night. She answered his kiss with fervour. She had missed him, too.

She pulled away first, but rested her head on his shoulder for a minute. She waited until they'd both returned to earth before trying to speak again.

"I heard about your father." She whispered. "I'm sorry, Draco."

He took a deep breath. "Don't be." She looked at him. "I made my choice. He made his a long time ago. It's done." Hermione didn't say anything, she just held his fingers in hers a little tighter and allowed him to be the next to speak. "Anyway, what's this _search_ I'm being invited on?"

"The search for Horcruxes." Draco's blank stare pushed her to explain further. "Before Dumbledore died…" Draco flinched. He hadn't been on the Astronomy Tower that night, but he had given the Death Eaters the entrance. When Hermione was at the Manor, Draco thought it would be much less suspicious if he had already proven his loyalty by giving them an entrance to the school. Essentially, he had given the Death Eater's access to the school in exchange for access to Hermione. He was aware of his choice for exactly what it was; he had exchanged Dumbledore's life for Hermione's. He had told her all of this in a letter, and Hermione had understood. She'd told him he didn't have a choice. They would have murdered him along with his father had he been caught.

It did not reduce Draco's guilt an inch.

"Dumbledore had been telling Harry about the theories he had that You-Know-Who had left objects – items imbued with severed parts of his soul in them – so that he would be immortal. The only way to create these items is to commit an act that tears the soul apart… Murder. Most people will create one Horcrux, relying on that to be sufficient that if the caster's body is destroyed, the piece of the soul living in the object would live on. We think You-Know-Who was trying to create _seven_ of these Horcruxes. And this was proven when Dumbledore found and destroyed a ring with a part of his soul inside." Hermione stopped to allow Draco to process this information.

"Right… So… You'll be going looking for these objects, these Horcruxes, instead of going back to school this year?"

"I doubt I'll be able to come back anyway. Death Eaters have found their way in. It wouldn't be safe… For either of us."

He knew what she was implying. He'd have to go on the run instead of return to Hogwarts anyway.

"So, what makes Potter think I might be useful to this?"

"Well, you were part of the Death Eaters. There's certain information we need to be able to take him on, and you're the perfect insider."

He only had to think for a moment. "I… I guess I won't have much else to do anyway." He agreed.

"Is this you saying yes? You're coming?" She was carefully concealing her emotions from him, but he could see in her eyes how much this would mean.

"Yes. I'll come with you. On some conditions." He clarified.

She looked at him warily. "Okay, what?"

"No kissing while the Weasel's around." Hermione laughed at his deadpan expression, before his eyes softened and he chuckled with her.

"Agreed." She looked around theatrically before kissing him lightly again. "Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of. What about you?"

"Just a couple." She returned to seriousness, looking him straight in the eyes. "Harry is the most important person on this journey. _I_ know you won't do anything to hurt him, but _they_ don't know that. They'll be suspicious of you, at least for a while. Let them figure it out on their own, okay?"

Draco rolled his eyes at her exasperatedly. "Okay."

"And one more thing. We look after Harry."

"You just said that one."

"No, I mean… If it comes down to it… You need to protect him above protecting me. I need to know I can trust you with this. The truth is, this is much bigger than any one of us individually, and Harry is much, much more than just another kid looking for a way to survive. He is the chosen one. The only one that can bring…" She took a deep breath and forced the word out. "…Voldemort down. You save him, not me. Are we clear?"

He nodded reluctantly.

"Say it." She burned him with the intensity in her eyes. How could he possibly say no to her now?

"I will protect Harry. No matter what." He met her golden eyes with a steady silver gaze.

"Thank you." She kissed his cheek, then seemed to think for a moment. "Listen, I need to tell you something… In case anything _does_ happen to me." She looked up at him with huge eyes. Draco started to protest, hating this conversation already, but she put her fingers over his mouth to silence him. "Shh. I know this is… soon, but I have to say it. In case anything happens to me… I love you. I just want you to know that." She looked down, hiding her eyes from him then, and he pulled her face gently back up to meet his gaze.

"I love you, too."

"Really?" He could see the genuine surprise in her eyes.

"Pfft. Obviously. Do you think I'd stick my neck out this much for anyone else?" He rolled his eyes. She brushed her hair back from her face as she laughed lightly. Leaning forward, she captured his lips with hers again. This time, their heat between them was less intense, more of a slow, burning sensation. Hermione moved her lips against his in a way that was becoming rapidly more familiar to him. He wrapped his hand softly into her hair, pulling her closer. She edged closer still, their thighs touching on the carpet, and enfolded her arms over his shoulders. This time, he had to pull away. He heard two sets of footsteps marching back up the stairs towards them.

He stood quickly, helping to pull her to her feet, and they faced the door.

"Are you ready?" Hermione whispered.

"No." Draco laughs. He took her hand, locking his fingers with hers.

"Together?" She asked.

"Together."

* * *

 **Wow. This has been one hell of a ride for me, thank you with all my heart to everyone that has read, reviewed, favourited, and followed this story. I originally intended this as a one-shot (just the first chapter) but after hearing the encouragement that people wanted to read more, the story seemed to write itself - despite how long it took me to actually get there. I'm thankful I can now officially say it's completed - open to sequel - because now I can start drafting up some of the other ideas I've had brewing. Please tell me what you think, I'd love to hear any and all suggestions for other stories/a sequel!**

 **Much love,**

 **EllaPenny x**


End file.
